“No. You come to me.”
“I still have patients! I can’t leave now. Besides, where would we go?”
“There’s some kind of park at the end of this boulevard.”
“That’s not a park, it’s a historical site. The Grand Village of the Natchez Indians.”
“Fine, whatever. It’s deserted, and it’s only a quarter mile away.”
“Agent Morse, I—”
“Is Thora leaving town today, Chris?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
A quick expulsion of breath. “This won’t take ten minutes. You owe it to yourself. To Ben, too.”
Irrational anger flooded through him. He considered asking Morse to wait ten minutes and then slip into his office, but sometimes one or two staff members stayed through lunch and ate Lean Cuisines in the lounge. He couldn’t be sure that wouldn’t happen today. “I’ll meet you there in five minutes.”
“I’ll be waiting on the big hill in the middle,” Morse said.
The big hill? “That’s a ceremonial mound, not a hill. An Indian mound.”
“Great. Please hurry.”
Fifteen minutes later, Chris was trotting under a thick stand of oak trees, heading for a vividly lit stretch of grass almost half a mile long. He jogged past a replica of an Indian hut and broke out into the sunlight. In the distance stood two steeply sloped mounds separated by eighty meters. The nearer was a ceremonial mound where the chief of the Natchez, the Great Sun, had once presided over the rituals of this unique tribe. Farther on stood the Temple mound. Both had been built by the sun-worshipping natives that settled this land a thousand years before the white man came. Like many old cities, Natchez had been founded upon murder, in this case the massacre of the Natchez Indians by French troops from New Orleans, in retaliation for a rebellion in the previous year—1729.
Chris shielded his eyes with the flat of his hand and studied the crest of the nearer mound. A small silhouette appeared against the sky. He wasn’t sure that the shadow figure was Alex Morse, but he walked in that direction anyway. He scanned the village grounds as he walked, sighting half a dozen tourists near the Temple mound, all moving in groups of two.
He breathed harder as he climbed the mound, but it was nothing compared to Emerald Mound north of the city. There the Natchez had constructed an earthen analog of the Mayan structures in the Yucatán, though anthropologists believed that no direct connection existed.
“It’s been twenty minutes,” said the silhouette above him.
When Chris reached the crest, he recognized Morse. She had exchanged her wet biking garb for khakis and a pale yellow top. He saw no sign of her gun. Maybe it was in the brown handbag that lay at her feet.
“What do you have to show me?”
“We’re pretty exposed here,” Morse said. “Can we move somewhere else?”
“Jesus. I guess so. St. Catherine’s Creek runs through this site. There’s a path under those trees over there that leads down to it.”
“Fine.”
She started in that direction without waiting for him. Chris shook his head in frustration, then followed.
Along the path, the trees changed from oak to elm and then to cottonwood. Thick stands of bamboo appeared on either side, and then they were walking on damp beige sand. The humid air smelled of dead fish. Only two years ago, Chris recalled, one of the most beautiful young girls in the city had been killed along this creek—not far away from here, in fact. Tom Cage’s son had defended the prime suspect in the case—a Natchez internist, of all people—and only by exonerating the suspected physician had Penn Cage escaped the ill feeling that had attached to his client during the investigation. But escape he did, for less than two months later Penn had been voted into the mayor’s office during a special election.
“How far away is this creek?” Morse asked, breathing hard and sweating harder.
“Fifty more yards.”
“Should we just stop here?”
“No. We’re in mosquito heaven.”
The trees gave way to an empty sandbar, beyond which lay a wide, placid creek. The calm water was misleading. During thunderstorms, Chris had seen the creek reach a depth of twenty feet as it swept through town carrying massive tree trunks along like matchsticks. It had been that way on the day that poor girl was murdered—
“That’s far enough,” said Morse, stopping in the middle of the sand. “Put your game face on, Doctor.”
Chris clenched his fists at his sides.
She opened her purse and handed him a sheet of printer paper still damp with ink. It was a photograph of Thora standing face-to-face with Shane Lansing. Behind them was a seamless sheet of black granite that Chris recognized as the face of the fireplace in the great room of their new house in Avalon. Thora’s face was highly animated—seemingly by anger, but he couldn’t be sure—and she was gesturing with both hands. Lansing was listening with a submissive expression Chris had never seen on his face before. It was difficult to read what was being discussed, but the two of them were standing very close together—definitely in each other’s space, though not quite at an intimate distance.
“Where did you get this?” Chris asked.
“You know where.”
“I mean how did you get it? And when?”
“I took that picture forty-five minutes ago. I printed it in my car on a portable Canon.”
Chris felt unsteady on his feet. Thora was wearing the same silk top and blue scarf she had worn to his office only minutes ago, and she had said nothing about talking to Shane Lansing. “You sneaked into the house with them?”
“I shot it through a window. I was tired of you telling me I’m full of shit. That I have no proof of anything.”
Chris looked downstream at a fifty-foot bluff covered with thick, green kudzu. “What do you think this picture proves?”
“That your wife is doing something besides giving Dr. Lansing the threepenny tour of your house. This is their third meeting this week.”
“Did you hear what they said?”
“I couldn’t get close enough without her seeing me.”
Chris walked over to a large driftwood log and sat down heavily.
“Dr. Shepard?”
He didn’t reply. He was thinking of last night, when he and Thora had made love on the couch in his studio. Of Thora’s efforts to get pregnant…her surprise plans for his studio…“I know this looks bad,” he said in a monotone, holding up the picture. “But it doesn’t prove they’re having an affair. Maybe Lansing is having problems at home. Maybe he’s confiding in Thora about something.”
Morse opened her mouth in astonishment. “You’re acting like a wife, Chris. A long-suffering wife defending her cheating husband to her family and friends.”
“Goddamn it,” he said in a low voice, “you don’t know Thora.”
“Maybe you don’t either.”
He looked up. “You’re saying she got it on with Shane Lansing, then drove straight to my office to give me a kiss?”
“You’ve got to wake up, Chris! Adulterers lie like that all the time. My fiancé left my best friend’s bed, then came straight to my apartment and had sex with me. He never even showered. But maybe that’s just my life. Did Thora tell you she came to your office to give you a kiss?”
Chris looked away and dropped the photo on the sand. “What else did she do today?”
“The usual. She ran, she showered, she swam at the country club. Then she drove to Mainstream Fitness for her weight lifting. She showered again there, then started walking to Planet Thailand.”
He nodded distantly.
“At the last minute, her cell phone rang. She took the call, then suddenly turned around and went back to her car. That’s when she drove out to Avalon.”
Chris looked up sharply. “Thora didn’t eat at Planet Thailand?”
“No. What did she tell you?”
I ate with Laura Canning at Planet Thailand today…. No, I’m full of sushi….
“Chris?”
He couldn’t look at Morse. An equivocal photo was one thing, an outright lie was another.
“She lied to you, didn’t she?” Morse said. “If you still have any doubts, check her cell phone bill. You can do it online. There’ll be a call from Lansing at twelve twenty-eight p.m. today. You have the picture that proves she met him immediately afterward, and you know she lied to you about where she was during lunch. Once you put those things together—”
“I get it, okay!” Chris snapped, turning away. “Just give me a minute here!”
Alex walked down to the water’s edge, leaving Dr. Shepard to absorb the new reality at his own pace. It was the lie that did it, she thought with satisfaction. She could have talked until she went hoarse and Shepard might have remained in denial. He was even prepared to make excuses explaining the photograph. But now that didn’t matter. Thora had damned herself with a single lie.
It hadn’t even been a necessary lie, Alex reflected. But that was human nature, as her father had explained many times. When people got into the habit of lying, they came to depend on it as a means of sliding easily through life. Thora probably hadn’t even considered the risk of that little fib. After all, she had planned to eat lunch at the Thai restaurant. And Chris would never check on something so small….
Alex looked down into the creek in search of fish, but all she saw was a cloud of tadpoles. The creek and the woods made her think of Jamie, and how her father had taught the boy to fish in the various waterways around Jackson. Bill Fennell had been glad for those fishing trips, she remembered, and now she knew why. Getting Jamie out of his hair had made it that much easier for Bill to meet his mistress for a quick screw. It left only Grace to get rid of, and Grace stayed so busy that she was easy to evade—especially after their mother’s diagnosis.
Oh, God, Alex thought, I need to check in with the nurses.
She turned back to Chris, ready to call out, That picture’s not going to change, no matter how long you look at it—but in the event she said nothing.
Chris Shepard was gone.
CHAPTER 16
The crowd roared at the clang of the aluminum bat, and two hundred eyes followed the arc of the hard-driven baseball beneath the lights. Coaching first base, Chris tensed and watched Ben race toward him from the batter’s box. The boy had smacked the ball between the second baseman and the bag, but the center fielder had charged forward and was already scooping up the ball.
“Turn and look!” Chris shouted.
Ben pivoted off the bag with his right foot and sprinted a third of the way to second base. The throw would easily beat him to the bag.
He had to come back.
Chris heard Thora cheering from the bleachers, but he didn’t look up. He’d been in a mild state of shock since seeing the photograph Alex Morse gave him on the bank of St. Catherine’s Creek. His first instinct had been to drive home and confront Thora, but by the time he passed the hospital in his car, he had calmed down enough to turn around, go inside, and make rounds instead. After that, he’d returned to his office and finished out the afternoon. Most of Thora’s blood tests had been completed by then, and the only abnormality he found was mild anemia, which he often saw in distance runners—
“Dad?” said Ben. “Do you want me to steal on a passed ball?”
Chris stared at Ben as though in a trance. This handsome young boy who called him Dad was the son of a man Chris had never met, the issue of a chapter of Thora’s life that remained largely unknown to him. Before Alex Morse arrived in Natchez, the unknowns in Thora’s life had not much bothered Chris. But now everything had changed. He hadn’t spoken to Thora since she left his office that afternoon. After work, he’d called Ben and told him to be waiting outside the house. Thora had waved from the kitchen window when he drove up, signaling for him to wait, but Chris had left for the baseball field without a word.
“Dad!” Ben said again. “Do I steal or what?”
Chris tried to force his mind back to reality. He hadn’t eaten lunch or dinner, and he’d been feeling dizzy since the game started. It was the bottom of the sixth inning, and the opposing team was up by one run. If his boys couldn’t score and push the game into extra innings, it was over. He looked at the batter’s box, and his heart sank. He’d reached the bottom of his batting order: three weak nine-year-olds in a row. They were good boys, but they couldn’t hit a baseball if their lives depended on it. He had moved Ben deep in the order to keep some power late in the lineup, but Ben could only do so much. Chris knelt beside him, met his eyes, and whispered, “Steal no matter what.”
Ben started to question this call, then thought better of it. He understood the situation. The instant the next pitch crossed the plate, Ben bolted for second base. The catcher caught the ball cleanly, jumped to his feet, and fired the ball across the pitcher’s mound. His throw was a little high—just high enough for Ben to slide safely under the second baseman’s glove as it whipped down to tag him. Half the crowd went wild, and the other half groaned.
Chris gave Ben a thumbs-up and watched his left fielder walk nervously into the batter’s box. The boy took his position at the plate, then looked worriedly at Chris. Chris hitched up his belt, giving the signal to bunt. While he waited for the pitch, he glanced over the chain-link fence to his left. As he did, he realized that his eye had been drawn by movement. A young woman was riding past the field on a bicycle. When she lifted her right hand in a subtle wave, Chris’s heart thudded in his chest.
Alexandra Morse.
She’d probably panicked after he disappeared from the creek bank. She’d called his cell phone so many times since that meeting that he’d switched it off. She’d even tried calling his office, but his staff had refused to put her through. Chris didn’t care. As Morse rode slowly away, his head whipped around at the ring of a baseball hitting aluminum. His left fielder had bunted the ball six feet in front of the plate and was now charging toward first base, his arms windmilling wildly in an effort to keep himself balanced.
Chris screamed encouragement, but in vain. The catcher drilled the ball into the first baseman’s glove while the boy was still ten feet from first base. The first baseman tried to throw Ben out at third, but Chris knew before he looked that Ben had made it. He patted his left fielder on the shoulder and told him he’d made a good play. Stay focused on the game, he thought, fighting an urge to glance in Morse’s direction again. Ben is on third…we can tie it right here.
There were two outs on the scoreboard. His next batter already had a strike against him. The opposing pitcher hadn’t thrown many wild balls today; most of his pitches were straight down the pipe. A strikeout was a near certainty. To tie it up, Ben would have to steal home plate. He had the speed, but would he have the opportunity?
Chris looked across the field at his third-base coach, a local welder. The man was looking at him questioningly. Chris closed his eyes for a moment, then tugged on his right earlobe. If the catcher missed a ball, Ben would go for it.
“Swing hard, Ricky!” Chris shouted. In this league, a swinging bat increased the odds that the catcher would miss the ball, especially the way Ricky Ross swung the bat. He was as likely to hit the catcher’s mitt as he was to hit the ball as it flew over the plate.
The pitcher unloaded a fastball. Ricky swung like Mark McGwire overdosing on steroids—and missed. The ball glanced off the catcher’s mitt and caromed off the backstop behind him. Ben exploded off third base, reaching full speed in five steps, but the pitcher was already dashing to cover home plate. The catcher wouldn’t beat Ben to the plate for a tag, but the pitcher might.
Ben sprinted as far as he dared before dropping into his slide, and then he was skidding down the baseline in a cloud of dust. Every voice in the bleachers fell silent, and Chris’s heart rose into his throat. He thought Ben had it, but a flash of white at the center of the dust cloud made him clench his fists in fear.
“Out!” screamed the umpire.
The stands erupte
d in a schizophrenic roar of fury and joy. Chris ran toward the plate, but it was no use arguing the call. He hadn’t seen the play. Instinct told him that no one had, including the umpire. There was so much dust that the final act of the game had been obscured. Ben got up, his face red, and stared at the umpire with tears in his eyes. He seemed on the verge of challenging the ump, so Chris caught him by the arm and pulled him into the dugout.
“It was a good try,” Chris said, “but it’s over. Time to be a man.”
The two teams lined up, then filed past each other saying, “Good game, good game,” and then it was over. Chris gathered his team behind the dugout, gave them an encouraging wrap-up talk in the gathering dusk, and dispersed them to their waiting parents. Four or five fathers told him he should file a protest about the final call, but Chris shook his head and told them to start thinking about the next game.
“Dad?” said Ben, tugging at his arm. “Can we stay and watch C.J.’s game?”
“No, honey,” said a female voice from behind Chris. Thora’s voice.
“Aw, come on, Mom! Dad didn’t say no.”
“All right, then,” Thora said in a clipped voice. “Ask your dad and see what he says.”
Ben grinned and looked up at Chris. “Can I, Dad? Can I?”
“Sure,” said Chris, “Let’s see how C.J. does against Webb Furniture.”
Ben screeched in delight and ran off toward the bleachers.
“Why did you do that?” asked Thora, stepping in front of him with a betrayed look. “I thought we were going to spend some time together at home.”
Chris choked back a half dozen replies. “He really wants to stay.”
“But I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“By your choice.”
She looked at Chris as though he’d slapped her.
“You’ll only be gone three days,” he said. “Right?”
Thora nodded slowly but said nothing.
He walked past her toward the bleachers. He thought she might call after him, but she didn’t. As he walked, he tried to get a handle on his emotions. After going back to his office, he had done as Morse suggested and checked the online billing records for Thora’s cell phone. He’d found several numbers he didn’t recognize, but none belonged to Shane Lansing. Chris knew this because he had called them all to check. Stranger still, there had been no call at 12:28 p.m. There wasn’t even a call in the thirty-minute window surrounding 12:28. Either Agent Morse was mistaken, or Thora had a cell phone he knew nothing about.