CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Sapir, one half of a pair of red setters that provided daily companionship to Catherine Valentine, rested his head on Kate’s lap, looking up at her with the big, loving eyes with which only dogs and small children were blessed.
Kate smiled at him and stroked the fur behind his ears.
“Sorry, buddy. I’m still not giving you some of my cherry pie. ”
Sapir rolled his eyes and sidled away to join his brother, Whorf. Whorf had already given up begging after a look from Catherine informed him that she would tolerate no such misbehavior from her boys tonight.
The woman in question leaned back and laughed, a beautiful sound that Kate hadn’t realized she’d missed so much.
The past several months had been hard for the two of them.
The disastrous end to Kate’s brief relationship with Marcus, and Catherine’s pleading to Kate to do something to fix it had led to several fights, the last one bad.
They’d seen each other since then, but each encounter was tentative, neither of them wanting to spark another argument.
This was the first dinner in a while where Kate felt like she and her mother actually got along.
Maybe it was just because she was exhausted after the Avery case, but Kate had spent the evening showing real interest in Catherine’s life and answered honestly when Catherine questioned her about hers, even the uncomfortable portions.
Catherine couldn’t seem to be convinced that Marcus and Kate weren’t sharing a bed, “or at least some piece of furniture” on a daily basis.
Kate endured that comment and several other badly disguised probes into her personal life, all the while gently insisting that what had happened between them was over, and Marcus was only there in case Cox tried to show up and do something stupid.
They’d enjoyed a wonderful dinner, fried cod with roasted capers, carrots, and turnips and rice pilaf on the side. Cherry pie for dessert and two glasses of the most delicious chardonnay Kate had ever tasted.
“A gift from the dean,” Catherine explained when Kate asked. “Don’t tell him, but I looked up the price when I got home.” She widened her eyes and tapped her nose, a gesture that didn’t really make any sense, but that Kate understood anyway.
“So, this dean,” Kate asked. “He cute?”
Catherine burst into laughter. “Oh, Kate. I have no interest in offering myself to another man. I’ve been there, done that, and I’m quite content to spend the rest of my life a widow.”
Kate’s smile faded at that, but she didn’t dampen their happiness. Not yet.
Now the evening was coming to an end. Her mother was making spiced coffee and carrying it to the living room.
They’d talk for another thirty minutes or so, and then Catherine would ask if Kate wished to spend the night.
The offer would be genuine, and on many occasions, Kate would accept, but tonight, she doubted she would receive it.
She had to ask her mother something that would ruin all of the joy they’d shared tonight. She hated that she had to ask it, but she did. She needed to know.
“You know, it’s a special man who will live with a woman he’s not having sex with,” Catherine said as Kate sank into one of a pair of richly upholstered easy chairs that stood on either side of the hand carved maple coffee table.
“He must truly care about you to know that you’re only a few yards away from him and still not make a move. ”
“It’s possible to care about someone and not want to shag them,” Kate said.
Catherine wrinkled her nose. “Don’t say shag, dear. It’s a dirty word.”
“I can use the American version if you want.”
“You could use the American version,” Catherine said wryly.
Kate rolled her eyes.
Catherine sighed. “I just don’t like seeing you alone.”
Tears welled in her eyes. She blinked them away quickly and lifted her coffee cup to her mouth to hide them, but Kate saw them before she could. It broke her heart anew.
I’m fine, Mom, was her line in this common script.
Catherine would protest that she could see that Kate wasn’t fine and implore her to accept the love of a good man, a kind man, a strong man.
Kate would remind her that she and Marcus had already tried that and insist that they were better as friends.
Catherine would scoff at the notion, but would give up, conceding the day with a final, I just want you to be happy.
But not tonight. Tonight, Kate had to tear a new wound in her mother’s fragile heart.
“Mom, did Dad ever lie about anyone?”
Catherine coughed, spraying coffee all over the table. Several drops splashed on the beige rug underneath, and Kate winced. She might have to buy her mom a new rug.
“What?” Catherine exclaimed. “Lie about anyone?”
“Yes. Did he ever lie about anyone?”
“What on Earth are you talking about? What brought this on?”
Kate sipped her coffee to give herself time to think of a reply. She wasn’t about to tell her mom that she’d read something to that effect in a letter Elijah Cox had written to another serial killer. “I’m just wondering.”
“Bullshit,” Catherine snapped.
The vehemence in her tone and the vulgarity of her words shocked Kate. Catherine stared at her daughter, eyes flashing. “Did Elijah Cox say that when he was… When you were…”
Her lips trembled, and Kate quickly said, “No, he didn’t.”
Which was true. He didn’t say that when he was trying to kill Kate at St. Anselm’s.
Catherine set her coffee cup on the table, eyes still flashing.
“Your father was the most honest man I’ve ever met.
God knows he had his flaws, and God also knows we had our trouble, but the one thing William never was was a liar.
Unless…” She swallowed. “He tried, Kate. He really did. I know I didn’t always act the best when he didn’t show up for your recitals or take us on the trips he promised, but—”
“I’m not talking about that,” Kate said. “I forgave him for that a long time ago.”
“Then what haven’t you forgiven him for?
” Catherine spat. “For God’s sake, Kate, the man died fourteen years ago.
Why the hell are you still trying to dig up skeletons?
Isn’t it enough that he loved us? That he loved you?
That he tried in his own small way to do some good in the world?
Why do you have to fixate on everything rotten and… and filthy?”
Sapir and Whorf barked and trotted to the living room, alarmed at Catherine’s outburst. She burst into tears shortly after, which didn’t help their mood.
Sapir looked at Kate and whined, his eyes pleading with her to do something, not understanding that Kate was responsible for the state his owner was now in.
Kate looked down at her coffee cup, feeling very small and just about as filthy as could be.
But she had to know. Someone had murdered her father, and everything she could have been, everything she wanted to be, had suddenly and irrevocably changed.
At the end of the day, the reason Kate wasn’t with Marcus was because losing her father had broken her, had left her unable to form healthy attachments, unable to let things go, unable to think about the future because her entire existence revolved around the unclear, unanswered, unfair past.
And God damn it, she deserved an answer.
She deserved at least that much. She deserved to know why she had been robbed of a life.
Not Cox’s bullshit preaching about commandments and plans and destinies.
A real reason why, even if it was as mundane and ridiculous as Cox channeling some twisted sexual obsession for her into a convoluted plan to murder dozens of people.
Even if it was as mundane as just being in the wrong place at the wrong time when the wrong person was looking at her. Even if—
A tear splashed into her coffee, and she realized she was crying, too. She set her cup down, wiped the tears from her eyes and looked up to see Catherine staring at her. Her lips were pulled down in a petulant frown. On her mother’s elderly face, the look was ugly and pitiful.
“He was a good man,” Catherine insisted. “If anyone says otherwise, then they’re wrong.”
Kate swallowed. When she spoke again, her voice was tremulous and reedy, just like it was the day she was caught making out with Bobby Hostetter in the basement of their home in Chicago. “I just need to know if—”
Catherine grabbed her coffee cup and stood abruptly. More liquid splashed onto the rug, but she ignored it and stomped toward the kitchen, not looking at or speaking to Kate. Kate sat where she was, shoulders rigid, eyes focused on her own cup, which Catherine hadn’t bothered to take.
The dogs trotted after her, casting tentative looks at Kate as they passed. Kate kept looking at her coffee cup, hating that she couldn’t let this go, hating that her mother couldn’t just tell her the truth.
After a minute, Kate heard the soft susurrus of the water faucet and the harsh, muted clink of nickel on porcelain as her mother washed the dishes. She remained where she was for a minute longer before getting to her feet and leaving her mother’s house.
Her headlights cast brilliant beams across the night, illuminating a wide swath of the road ahead. Kate’s eyes followed those beams, allowing her to see oncoming turns and the flat, glossy patches of ice that presented the most dangerous hazards on the road.
Beyond those beams, the world was pitch-black. The lights of Portland proper in the distance only seemed to mock Kate, hinting at a world of brightness just beyond her reach.
It was a mistake to talk to her mother. In her own way, Catherine was as much a slave to the past as Kate was.
While Kate couldn’t stop digging, Catherine couldn’t stop burying.
Kate wanted to know. Catherine wanted to choose what she knew and what she forgot.
She would never give Kate the answers she sought.
Kate’s eyes widened. Maybe she didn’t have to. There was someone else, one other who might know what Cox’s last letter meant and what her father might have done to deserve his punishment.
Kate reached for her phone and dialed a number. When the party on the other end answered, she said, “Yes, this is Special Agent Kate Valentine, badge 0914-BQ. I need to speak to an inmate in your facility.”
“What’s the inmate’s name?”
“Peter S. Gadd.”