Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [120]
I gave Bert the look he deserved. The one that said he was a greedy son of a bitch, and I knew he’d turned down their money for something other than humanitarian reasons. He just sat back and smiled at me, because he knew what that particular look meant. It meant I would do it, even if I hated it.
29
MRS. BARBARA BROWN was blond, and Mr. Steve Brown was brunette with gray coming in at the temples. He’s was taller than she was by about five inches, but other than that, they matched. You could still see the pretty round-faced cheerleader she’d been in high school. The handsome football player was still there in his shoulders and the edges of his face, but the extra weight and the extra years and the grief had covered over who they’d been. Their eyes were bright, but it was an unnatural brightness, almost shocky. She spoke too fast, and he spoke too slowly, as if he had to think about each word before he said it. She spoke as if talking about her son was something she had to do, or she’d explode, or break down.
“He was a straight-A student, Ms. Blake, and here’s the last picture he painted. It was a watercolor of his youngest sister. He had such talent.” She held up the picture, which they’d brought in one of those art carriers that looks like a thin briefcase.
I dutifully looked at the painting. It was a very soft picture, all watery blues and delicate yellows, and the child’s curls were almost white. The little girl was laughing, and the artist had caught a shine in her eyes that usually required a camera to capture. It was good. For a junior in high school, it was spectacular.
“It’s a wonderful painting, Mrs. Brown.”
“Steve didn’t want me to bring it. He said that you didn’t need to see it, but I thought if you saw what kind of person he was, that you’d be willing to do what we want.”
“I don’t think that seeing Stevie’s paintings will influence Ms. Blake, that’s all, Barbara.” He patted her hand as he finished, and she didn’t react to it at all. It was almost as if he hadn’t touched her. I began to understand who was the driving force behind this tragic farce. Because it was a farce. She wasn’t talking like she wanted her son brought back as a zombie so he could say who’d murdered him. She was talking like she was trying to persuade me to do a Lazarus on him, to really bring him back. Had Bert heard that in her voice and ignored it, or had she saved it for me?
“He was a track star, and on the football team.” She opened the yearbook to appropriate places, and I looked at Stevie Brown running in shorts with a baton in his hand, head thrown back, a look of utter concentration on his face. His hair was dark and not long. Stevie Brown kneeling on the ground in full football gear, helmet on the ground by his hand. He was grinning out at the camera, his bangs spilling over his eyes. He had his father’s hair, and a thinner, younger, brighter version of his mother’s face, except for the lips and the eyes, which, again, were his father’s.
I saw a picture of him on the yearbook staff, bent over a layout table, face very serious. He looked like someone that would run track, thin, muscled, but not much bulk. I wouldn’t have picked him for football, not beefy enough. But who knew if he might have filled out in the summer between junior and senior year. But he never got the chance.
Prom night, he and his senior girlfriend had been crowned king and queen. There was a picture of them in front of a background of fake silver stars and too many sequins. He was beaming into the camera. He’d cut his hair and styled it so it was neat and thick and flattered his face more than the way it had when he