Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [15]
The detective showed up at six-thirty that evening.
Chapter Five
1
They sat in the living room. Although all the lamps were turned up, even the overly bright halogen one near the fireplace, Julie felt as if it were shadowy.
She had unbuttered whole-wheat toast and some tea with a little honey. It was all she had eaten that day, and all she had wanted to eat.
“I don’t really understand,” she said, after the first few questions.
“It’s a pattern,” McGuane said. He drank a Diet Coke and refused the cookies offered by Mel, who sat near the upright piano but said nothing. Julie noticed his wedding band, and a ring that looked like a college signet ring. She didn’t want to look back up at his face.
“Why haven’t you gotten him yet?” she asked.
2
McGuane took a sip from his soda, and then glanced over at Mel. Then, out the window. He nodded as if talking to himself. “I wish I had an answer for you. Can you think of anything that would connect your husband to this?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine…” Julie looked down at her teacup. Keep your fingers from trembling. Just keep the teacup still.
“We’re hoping you might have records here. Not much to go over at the clinic.”
She glanced up at his face. “He didn’t bring his work home. That was important to him.”
After the detective had passed her the beige folder with the photographs, she set her cup down on the red table beside her. She opened the folder.
“You know,” McGuane said, more to Mel than to her. “I live across the Hudson all my life, and I had no idea Jersey is anything but an industrial tract and you know, The Sopranos. Then I come out here and there are all these lakes and trees and it’s like, I don’t know, Pennsylvania.”
“Except without the Amish,” Mel said. She offered up a weak grin. Julie wished she’d had the presence of mind to thank her out loud for adding some humor to the somber atmosphere.
Death is everywhere. Death is all around, all the time, she thought. At work, and now here. In my living room. In my house. Uninvited. I don’t want it.
Julie turned each photograph over.
More dead people. Just faces. Pale. Not really human anymore. Like white masks. Hollow.
“I’m sorry to do this to you,” he said, his voice barely more than a mumble. “I’d rather catch this guy before he does it again.”
“I’ve never seen these people before,” she said. The sound of her own voice, weary and flat, made her feel heavier.
The pictures: two women and a man. Eyes closed. Empty shells of human beings. Gone.
Her half-Catholic, half-Episcopalian upbringing reared up in her. Their spirits have flown. They are in God’s hands. They are in heaven. Or some other finer place. Beyond trouble. Beyond this world.
Beyond the grasp of the one who killed them.
“There’s another picture,” McGuane said. “Inside.”
She checked the folder. Under a thin piece of onionskin paper, one last photograph.
It was a man’s back. Perhaps it was Hut’s. Nothing reminded her of him, but she had barely recognized him in the morgue, so she didn’t expect to identify him without seeing his face. That was why pictures like this were safe. They could be of anyone and no one at the same time.
All kinds of circles and drawings were carved into the man’s back, from the shoulder blades down to the small of the back, just above the buttocks.
“Do you have any idea what this might be?”
Julie shook her head.
“He carves things into the bodies. He has a ritual. We know a little about what the symbols are. We just don’t know where they lead us.”
Julie remembered the carving on Matt’s arm. Don’t be ridiculous. It’s nothing like this. Matt’s arm and this man’s back have different things on them. Don’t let your mind go with this, Julie. Don’t.
“No idea. What is it? They’re like tattoos.”
“Can I see?” Mel asked.
Julie glanced at McGuane who gave a slight shrug. Mel got up and went over to retrieve the picture. After glancing at it, Mel said, “You’re making her look at this kind of stuff, now?”
McGuane kept his composure. “We want to do everything we can to stop this guy.”
“It’s all right, Mel. Really,” Julie