Before I Sleep (29 page)

“Seems like it.”

“I wasn't fair to you.”

She turned her head and looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“We were both hanging on by a thread, weren't we.” (It wasn't a question.) “But I had no business getting involved with
anyone
while I was still in the grip of survivor guilt. And that's exactly what it was—and is. I was so fucking involved in my own guilt trip that I didn't have anything to give you.”

“That's not true. You were always there for me… at least until the end when everything started to… fracture.”

“I only
seemed
to be there. I wasn't really. And I think you knew it. I couldn't handle the really important stuff, like the emotional hell you were going through at work. I didn't have anything left for it. So I blew you off and didn't listen as carefully as I should have; I know that, so don't bother denying it.”

She twisted so that she was sitting cross-legged beside him, looking at him. “Where is this postmortem going?”

He pushed himself up on an elbow. “Simple. The guilt trip you're on right now made me realize what kind of guilt trip I've been on—and how destructive it can be. It made me look back at what I've done—mostly to you. It's ugly, Carey. It's real ugly.”

“Are you saying that what I'm doing is ugly?”

“No. Not at all.” He reached out and brushed a damp tendril of hair from her face. “What you're doing is beautiful, actually. Beautiful and caring and admirable. But the guilt you're feeling isn't. Guilt is an ugly thing when it haunts us day and night, and drives us to do irrational or hurtful things. Guilt has one purpose: to make us realize when we've done something wrong. But when it consumes us it becomes a disease.”

She sniffled. “I never thought I'd hear you say that.”

“Sometimes even my thick head gets the message. I've let guilt eat up a significant portion of my life. Worse, I've let it cause me to hurt somebody I care about, namely you. I don't want to see it do the same thing to you.”

She shook her head. “What can you do about it? It's something you feel.”

“That's what
I
said.” He sighed and flopped back down on the bed. “Talk is cheap. I'm just flapping my jaws. All I can see is that you're heading for a major emotional wreck, and I'd do anything in my power to prevent it.”

She didn't know what to say to that. He was right. All her mixed feelings were rising like floodwaters behind a weakening dam.

“One thing I do know,” he said after a while. “You've got no cause to feel this guilty. You didn't single-handedly put John Otis on death row. It's
his
life, and he's not doing a damn thing to prevent this. He clammed up from the very start, and wouldn't give us a thing to go on that might have gotten him off. You said it yourself—he knows who did it.

“Well, if
he
knows and won't do anything to save himself, how can you carry the entire burden? Give yourself a break, Carey. Even if you'd had no part in the trial, the outcome would have been the same.”

She nodded slowly, but she didn't see how that really exculpated her. Because no matter what he said, she
had
played a role.

Closing her eyes against the anxiety that was eating her alive, she suddenly remembered the book that had been lying in John Otis's cell:
A Tale of Two Cities.
And just as suddenly she remembered the famous quote from that book,” It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.” Was that what Otis was thinking?

“Son of a bitch,” she said suddenly. “He has no right to do that!”

Seamus sat up. “What?”

She told him about the book and the quote.

“Christ,” he said, following her reasoning. “Self-sacrifice? How can you stop that? And what do you mean, he has no right to do it?”

“Because he's not just sacrificing himself! He's making all of us
accomplices
in his suicide by forcing the state to kill him when he's innocent. He's making us all into murderers by doing that. He has no right to do that to anyone. He has no right to do that to
mel”

“No,” Seamus agreed after a moment's thought. “Last year some guy got suicidal and didn't have the guts to pull the trigger himself. So he pulled a gun on a cop. The cop's still in therapy.”

“But even if he doesn't see it as suicide—and maybe he doesn't—he's wrong in thinking he's committing some noble act of self-sacrifice. If his brother were innocent, that would be one thing. But the guy is evidently a multiple murderer. Saving James has already cost three people their lives. How many more are going to die if James stays free? Where is the nobility in allowing a murderer to kill again? God, Seamus, John has this all twisted up in his head!”

Seamus rubbed his chin and sighed. “You're probably right.”

“I'll tell you one thing, I'm not going to let him make me a party to this. If I do nothing else, I've got to make sure that James never kills another person.”

“I'm going to order room service,” he said after a while.

“We both need the rest. Besides, I'm expecting a call.”

“From who?”

He gave her a crooked smile. “Local law enforcement. You never know what you might find out.”

She looked down at her restlessly twining fingers. “I don't think I can eat, Seamus.”

“Okay. I won't order. We'll go out later.”

Then, without so much as a by-your-leave, he reached out and pulled her down so that she lay half across him, her breasts pressed to his chest, her face inches from his.

“I'm starved,” he said, his voice rumbling deep in his chest in a way that reminded her of a huge cat. “I haven't eaten since breakfast, and you know my appetite.”

Yes, she knew his
appetites.
They were all large, and not all of them were for food. She was feeling almost giddy, being this close to him, reading the slumberous heat in his eyes. Food wasn't all he wanted. A slow, deep pulsing began between her legs.

It was as if all the air had been sucked from the room, and the entire universe had narrowed to this man. Everything else seemed to recede into the distant reaches of space and time. Her entire being hummed with yearning just for him, and not even the last fading voice of sanity could stop her. She needed him. She needed the forgetfulness he was offering.

There was an almost painful sense of awakening somewhere inside her, as feelings she had long ago put to sleep began to stir to new life. She had never stopped wanting this man, she realized. They were doomed, but she had never stopped wanting him anyway. She had only pretended that she didn't care anymore.

Because care she did. She felt as if she were being painfully yanked out of some warm dark place and forcibly thrust back into reality, and with the emergence all the anguish returned. The scars on her heart, so tender yet, burst wide, revealing the gaping wound that had never healed.

It hurt. It hurt almost too much to bear, to realize she still loved this man. But no matter how much it hurt, she couldn't make herself turn away, because that would hurt more.

Just then, the phone in his room rang. His eyes closed briefly, and he drew a deep breath.

Freed of his hypnotic gaze, she rolled away quickly, grabbed the blow-dryer and brush, and locked herself in the bathroom. Tears came then, and she bit a towel to stifle her sobs. She didn't want him to know how much he still touched her. She couldn't bear for him to know that she was still completely and totally vulnerable to him.

Because she didn't want him to know just how totally crazy she still was. Because it terrified her. Because she didn't think she could survive another broken heart.

An hour later she had dressed in a green sheath and low-heeled pumps, ready to go out to dinner. He was in his room, behind the closed adjoining door, and she could hear him talking still. Finally, growing impatient, she opened the adjoining door and walked into his room.

He looked up from the phone still welded to his ear, and smiled, raising a finger to indicate he'd be just a minute.

When he hung up, he let his gaze travel slowly over her with obvious appreciation. “Changed your mind about going out?”

Anything was better than spending any more time alone with him in the vicinity of a bed, she thought. “I need to get out of this funk. It isn't doing anybody any good.” Worse than not doing any good, it was putting her in danger. She felt so at sea, so frightened, that she was apt to sail straight into the port of Seamus's arms. Only she knew it wasn't a safe port.

“Good.” He stood up and began buttoning the top buttons of his shirt. “I hope you don't mind, but I said I'd meet a detective from the Atlanta police in about thirty minutes at a place not too far from here. If we don't have dinner with him, we can go somewhere afterward, okay?”

“Sounds good to me.” In fact, it sounded infinitely better than being alone with Seamus anywhere. “Going to trade war stories?”

“We already did some of that. But it seems he was acquainted with James Henry Otis.”

Carey forgot her emotional crisis as her heart jumped. “Really? What does he know?”

“That's what we're going to find out. It could be interesting. Then again, it may be nothing but ordinary childhood pranks.”

“Not if it needed a detective.”

“I don't know if he was a detective then.” He glanced at his watch, then unbuttoned his shirt collar again. “Let me wash up a bit. Traveling always makes me feel as if I've got layers of dirt everywhere.”

He disappeared into his bathroom, leaving her to wonder if at last they were really onto something.

They met Detective Gordon Shanks at a pub about twenty minutes from their hotel. He was a tall, lanky man, with skin the color of coffee and a ready smile and handshake. He looked tough, but his voice was surprisingly gentle from a man so big.

They sat together in a leather-padded booth with high-backed benches that effectively cut them off from the world. A waitress brought crackers with the menu and took their drink orders. Everyone ordered coffee, but Shanks added a double order of potato skins.

“I don't know about y'all,” he said, “but I'm famished. I figure we can share the skins, and order dinner later if you want.”

“Sounds good to me,” Seamus agreed, and Carey nodded her approval.

“So,” said Shanks, looking at Carey, “Seamus tells me you were with the prosecutor's office down your way.”

“Yes, I was.”

“And now you're a radio talk-show host. I think I've heard you. Carey Justice, right? You're doing all those shows on John William Otis.”

She nodded. “That's me.”

“Bet you're taking some flack.”

She had to smile. “You could say that.”

“Well, just as long as my name doesn't get on the air, I don't mind. And we're talking about juvie records here. I shouldn't be discussing it at all.”

“I have no intention of putting any of this on the air. We're just following a lead.”

Shanks nodded. “That's what he told me. Well, I gotta say if the brother you have down there is anything like the brother we got up here, you're wasting your time. This kid was born to be trouble.”

Seamus leaned forward alertly. “How so?”

“One scrape after another. You know, when you've got a juvenile who gets into trouble once or twice you can think maybe it's just a kid feeling his oats and not thinking too clearly. But when you got a kid who does it again and again, you know you've got real trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Well, it started with joyriding. Then he got involved in shoplifting. Five or six incidents, as I recall, but his family had money, so they made restitution and the kid got probation. He was in and out of court from the time he was twelve until he was sixteen or so. And in and out of counseling, too. Given his background, the courts didn't have any difficulty believing this was a seriously troubled kid who needed help.”

Seamus nodded, scribbling notes on his pad. “Nothing violent, though?”

“I wouldn't say that. It never got charged, but I heard he popped a teacher and was suspended for a while. The school didn't report it because he was on probation for a car theft at the time, and the judge would have slammed his butt in jail. The parents apparently paid off the teacher, and got Jamie into a new counseling program. I heard he threatened other kids with a knife, but again, nobody pressed charges or called the cops.”

“How'd you hear this then?” Carey asked.

He smiled. “I was on juvie detail back then. I had ears to the ground all the time. When I found a kid who was going bad, I started checking on them from time to time, you know? I know other kids were scared of him, but it wasn't like he was out-of-control violent. It was like they liked him, but they knew he had a problem with his temper, so they kind of tiptoed around him.”

“Not a serial-killer type then.”

“I don't think so.” Shanks sat back to let the waitress put the two platters of potato skins and three plates in front of them. “Dig in, folks. Help yourselves. There's more where this comes from.” He took his own advice, lifting two of the large, stuffed skins onto his plate.

Seamus and Carey each helped themselves, and for a little while no one talked as they ate.

“No,” said Shanks, as he reached for a third skin, “I wouldn't have figured him for that type at all. He had an impulse-control problem. That's how he kept getting into trouble. He'd do whatever fancy took him without thinking about it. And he
did
have an anger-control problem. A serious one. I always figured we'd be locking his butt up for a long time one day when he lost his temper and really hurt somebody. Why? Do you see him doing something different?”

Seamus filled him in on the murders in St. Pete and the radio-station caller who was linking them to John Otis. Shanks nodded, eating as he listened.

“Well, it could be, I suppose,” he said. “Can't say I know the man at all now. It's possible he's got himself worked up into some kind of emotional frenzy. Or maybe something happened to him in that mental hospital, and he's turned into a cold-blooded murderer.”

“What do you know about his institutionalization?” Carey asked. “Anything at all?”