Retribution (22 page)

"I have nowhere else to be this morning." He polished off his orange juice, still vaguely hungry, got up and made himself at home at her coffee maker. "Try me."

"It's the way I paint, sometimes."

He busied himself with the filter and the coffee, sensing that it was easier for her to talk if he was not looking at her. "Listening. Making plain coffee here, unless you'd rather have one of these flavored—"

"No. No, that's fine. Thank you."

He could hear her take a deep breath. Studiously, he kept his eyes on the coffee, measuring it out, savoring the smell of it, finding the filter.

"I started having nightmares after my father died."

"Quentin is not your father?"

"No. My father died suddenly when I was eight. I don't remember much before then. They told us I was severely traumatized by his death. I wouldn't know. I can't remember… but I started having these nightmares."

"Nightmares or night terrors?"

She downed her orange juice, then met his eyes. "Night terrors?"

"Nightmares are dreams. We all get them. Night terrors… are different. They shake you to your very core, and often you can't even remember them. Sometimes you bolt out of bed and run—" he paused.

"Night terrors," she repeated slowly. "Close. All I know is that when I wake, I paint. I want to paint, I have to paint. What I've seen, what I've felt… painting is how I deal with it. Once or twice before the tumor, I painted at night, not knowing."

"And last night."

"Yes." She put a fingertip to the rim of her juice glass, captured some orange pulp hanging there, and sucked it from her finger. "It comes on me, some great soft dark cloud… sometimes I think I'm going to suffocate… when I was little, I called it Midnight."

He stood in front of the coffee machine, smelling the fragrance as the steaming hot water began to hiss through the coffee grounds, and the dark brown liquid began to trickle through, and the aroma wafted up. "Like a seizure?"

"I don't know. I think so."

He set up two mugs from the cup holder tree. "I guess it stopped when you had the tumor removed."

"Everything stopped. No Midnight, and no desire to paint anything whatsoever, for any reason. It was as though I had had the artistic eye cut out of me."

"But you're still an artist."

"Textiles, conceptual art, yes. I enjoy the designing, the textures, the weaving, the play of colors." Charlie watched his face as he pushed a mug of coffee into her hands. "But I could not paint any more."

"You tried?"

"For a while, after the physical therapy. The weakness makes it difficult, but I could do it." She sighed. "I just didn't want to."

"And now Midnight is back."

"With a vengeance. And so is a tumor, evidently."

He sat down abruptly, hiding the shock he felt, the cold fear. "That's why you fainted."

She nodded slowly, wordlessly. A single tear escaped her right eye, glistening and rolling from her slightly drooped lid. "What am I going to do?"

"What you did last time." He put a hand out to cover her right hand. Her bones felt slight and frail under his, her skin slightly cool. "Do what you have to and get over it."

She smiled slightly. "You make it sound easy."

"Hell. Nothing is easy. But easy and possible are two different things." He sipped his coffee carefully. "How certain are they?"

"Fairly. They want me to repeat the tests, to be certain. Then… I have a microneurosurgeon… he'll want to do surgery as soon as possible."

"Is it malignant?"

"It wasn't last time. There are no guarantees this time."

"Never are." John felt himself smile wryly. He saw her put her coffee mug down. "Ready?"

She nodded. "I have to see what I did."

He leaned over the table, and with the ball of his thumb, gently wiped away a streak of blue just at the corner of her mouth. Charlie gave a nervous laugh. She did not, however, move from his touch. He fancied she even turned into it momentarily.

She stood and though Jagger trotted over expectantly, she moved to lean on John. The dog made a chuffing noise. She glanced at him. "Lie down," she ordered. He did so, turning round and round on the planked flooring before making himself comfortable.

"I'll take him out for a run after you're finished with the paintings." He felt her settle her balance on his arm. She gave no indication of hearing him, her attention was on the hall.

He escorted her past the canvases. Her face paled again, her glance sweeping over them, from the three standing against the hallway walls, to the seven which lay about the living room.

Five of them were hastily painted, the strokes thick, the night and stars and highway rendered in heavy, suggestive, impressionistic movements. He watched her as she glanced over each quickly, then went back and pondered each painting as deeply as if she were an art critic dissecting them. Then she said, "There is a story here. Chronologically. Help me arrange them."

She directed him. He picked up and moved the still wet canvases, swapping them back and forth, with her correcting him and pointing until she stopped, and looked again, and then seemed satisfied.

"Now look at them… and tell me what you see."

He rocked from foot to foot uneasily. He looked at the paintings… dark… nights illuminated with twinkling stars and car beams… cut by scenes that made him nervous.

"I've painted a murder," said Charlie faintly.

He did not know how to answer her.

She shivered, her shoulder brushing his. He put an arm around hers, steadying her, warming her. "You've painted fear, that's all." He could not understand the emotions inside her that drove her to paint the scenes before him, but he knew the violence had not, could not, come from inside her. Not from the person he was coming to know. "Fear and the aftermath— I don't see a murder here."

"There's a missing scene." She shook her head. "Regardless. Murder." Charlie inhaled deeply. "And I've done it before."

"What?"

She left him, limping through the house, and coming back with a magazine in her hand. "The Peppermill still has this on loan. It's part of the Lavermans' collection. The photo isn't real clear, but it's here."

He took the periodical from her. Charlie sank to the edge of the couch, her gaze fixed back on the canvases. "You met Judge Laverman and his wife at the benefit."

John nodded absently, only half looking as he studied the magazine photos. His trained eye, from the past, made it hit him before he could try to view it as art… a crime scene sprawled before him. It had nothing to do with the new canvases in her house, but was nonetheless bizarre and disturbing, even the half frame of it which the camera had caught. He looked up at her, hoping to hide his expression, but could not, and she saw it in his face.

"Oh, God," she said faintly. "What have I done?"

* * *

Quentin Saunders strode up, and grasped Wade's hand in a firm handshake as he rose to meet him. "Doctor. Good to see you again. With a little more notice, I could have cleared my calendar and taken you to lunch." Quentin released his hand, but not before the impression of a man who had made his living through physical ability as well as business acumen was made.

Wade sat back down. The resin chairs on the patio were slightly less than comfortable, but the clarity of the view of the coast and the refreshing ocean breeze more than made up for it. "Coffee is fine. George Laverman is meeting me for lunch while I'm down here. This just gives me a chance to talk with you in person."

Quentin frowned, creasing his lined face, and shifted his chair slightly. Wade looked at him, realizing the graying hair had gotten more and more silvered over the years, the lines deeper and deeper around the eyes and mouth. The neckline had begun to sag, almost imperceptibly, but it was there. Wade looked at Saunders and felt time beginning to touch himself as well. Saunders waited until the waiter brought his coffee and set it down in front of him.

"Is this about Charlie?"

Wade inclined his head.

Quentin made two tries to pick up the tall, curved mug. "And a phone call would not do." He paused. "How bad is it?"

"I wish I knew. Preliminary readings of the MRI from Sunset indicate a new growth, but, frankly, their equipment doesn't have the clarity ours does, and Charlie has refused to undergo new tests."

"What?" Coffee splashed onto the glass-topped bistro table and spread, almost like a puddle of blood.

"That's why I'm here."

"And you let her walk out?"

"She's an adult now, Quentin. There isn't much I could do. I had the clinic schedule her anyway, and advised both Charlie and her mother that she should not try to ignore this, that it will only make things more difficult in the long run."

Quentin folded both of his huge hands around the coffee cup, dwarfing it. "Is it cancer this time?"

"I don't know yet. I am optimistic that it may not be, like last time, but I won't know until I go in… if she lets me." Wade looked into Quentin's eyes. "You have to persuade her, Quentin."

"She'll make your appointments," Saunders answered grimly.

"Charlie is frightened."

The other flinched slightly, a muscle ticking in his jawline. "She knows you, she knows Katsume. You saved her life."

"She went though a lot. This is not the kind of thing anyone wants to repeat, no matter how successful the first treatment was." Wade stood. "Just call the clinic and confirm, if you can get her in. If not, reschedule. Try to bring her in as soon as possible, Quentin. The growth of this tumor seems to be rapid. Every day can make a difference."

As he passed by Saunders, he dropped a hand to his shoulder, and squeezed. "We all love her. We all want the best for her."

Saunders gave a shaky jerk of his head. "God knows, I don't want her to go like my mother… comatose for two years… barely alive… God knows, someone like Charlie should have her whole life before her."

Wade patted him. "My team and I will do everything we can."

* * *

John brought Jagger back in from his run and sat down on the couch, where Charlie still stared unblinkingly at her paintings. He took her face in his hands, gently making her look at him.

"What on Earth makes you think you've done something wrong?"

She looked back at him, her lower lip quivering slightly. "John, look at the magazine again."

"I don't need to."

She took a deep breath. "But I do."

He let go of her and reached for the magazine. This time, she turned the page. Wordlessly, she pointed to another painting.

Stunned, he looked from the magazine's slick rendering, to the paintings in front of him, and back again. This painting showed a confrontation and, put together with the ones she had just finished, the tale of a killing became clear. "Charlie, how…?"

She touched the magazine. "I painted that nearly eleven years ago." She took the magazine from him and closed it. "Do you know why we have art?"

He watched her face. "Tell me."

"To express, teach, and inspire." Her expression went bleak. "God help me," she repeated. "I've inspired someone to become a murderer."

"You can't know that."

"I can." Haltingly, she told him what she could remember.

Sometime as she spoke, he reached out and drew her onto his lap, holding her, cradling her, listening to her flow of words, thinking his own thoughts, his body independent of his mind, feeling her next to him, the fragrance of her hair, the slight taint of oil paint from her skin. He tried to blanket her, to warm her, to give her strength. He felt himself begin to react to her nearness.

John rubbed her shoulders lightly before deciding to put her aside, back on the sofa, his desire totally inappropriate to what he had intended, unable to help himself. As he shifted slightly, to gather her up and move her, Charlie stopped talking abruptly, and tilted her face up toward his. She kissed him, catching him offguard, her mouth soft and gentle, not quite meeting his lips.

He almost pulled away but not before she kissed him again, this time seeking his mouth and finding it, hers parting slightly, hungrily, and he gave an inaudible groan, wanting to answer her.

She drew back. "Let me feel this," she said.

"Charlie…" He reared back slightly, fighting himself, yet did not push her away, unable to.

She ran her hands lightly over his shirt, parted the neck of it, bent her head and kissed his throat, trailing her lips up to his jaw, over his chin, searching for his mouth again. "Let me feel something besides cold and afraid and alone… something besides Midnight."

He touched her hair, soft and silken, its golden-brown strands tangling about his fingers. She turned her head and caught his hand and snuggled her face against his palm.

He found breath enough to say, "Are you sure?"

"Of this, yes."

He pulled her closer, and kissed her back then, possessing her mouth, gripping her shoulders tightly, tasting her lips, her tongue, her mouth, velvety soft and open to him. Sometime later, he managed, "Tell me no… just tell me if you want me to stop…"

She murmured many things to him over the next moments, but "no" was never one of them.

He left her curled on the couch, an old and worn afghan tucked around her, and went through the house looking for paper, before going out to the van and finding a pocket-sized notebook. Jagger yawned at him when he came back in, and flopped over, his flank to the edge of the couch, guarding Charlie with his very body… even if he was practically sound asleep.

John walked his way through the paintings again, then opened the magazine and sketched the death scenes, both of them, and then added whatever details from the new paintings he could put into words. Lovemaking had quieted her soul, and set his into motion. His years on the force and his continued association with it had taught him that nothing was impossible, that sometimes the mildest of people had a venal streak. But that her paintings could inspire that, he doubted. He could tell her in words, but he could do more— he could prove it. And would.