Delusion Read online

  Pirate stared at her. He got that squinting feeling in his non-eye, stronger than ever before, strong enough to hurt. For a moment, he thought he was actually seeing out of it, out of an empty socket. The beautiful skin on her face dissolved and the bones underneath appeared, clear as day, very fine. Yes, he was seeing out of his former eye.

  “As you may recall,” Susannah said, “the murder took place at the Parish Street Pier on the Sunshine Road bayou, not far from Magnolia Glade. That’s six point three miles from Nappy’s—or rather, from where Nappy’s used to be. I measured it myself, Mr. DuPree. Do you see what this means? No one can be in two places at the same time. You didn’t do it, end of story.”

  Tell me something I don’t know. Pirate kept that thought to himself.

  “Time’s up,” said the guard.

  CHAPTER 2

  Light slanted down through the gently heaving water in sunny columns, one of which illuminated a little fish swimming near the base of the reef, purple and gold, like a jewel on the move. Nell breathed deeply through her snorkel, filling her lungs, and dove straight down with slow, powerful kicks, her upper body still. Near the bottom, she stopped kicking and glided the rest of the way, hovering over the fish. A fairy basslet, or possibly a beaugregory, but Nell had never seen either one with gold so bright, purple so intense. It looked up at her, tiny eyes—most colorless of all its parts—watching her, void of any expression she could define. The fish was hovering, too, its front fins vibrating at hummingbird-wing speed, filagreed fins so close to transparent they were almost invisible. And—this was amazing—the two front fins didn’t match: one was purple, the other gold. Nell, transfixed, lost all track of time until she felt pressure starting to build in her chest. She checked the depth gauge on her wrist: fifty-five feet. Nell was a good breath holder. She turned back for a last look at this special fish, perhaps one of a kind. It was gone. She kicked her way back up.

  Nell broke the surface, blew through her snorkel, sucked in the rich air. Bahamian air: it had its own smell, floral and salty, her favorite smell on earth, and this was her favorite place. She turned toward Little Parrot Cay, a coral islet about fifty yards away: from this angle, tropical paradise pared down to the simplest components—white sand beach, a few palm trees, thatched hut—all colors bright, as in a child’s version. In fact, hadn’t Norah, her daughter, now in college, once come home from school with just such a painting? Nell was trying to remember the details when something down below grabbed her leg.

  She jerked away, a frightened cry rising up her snorkel, a cry she smothered when her husband burst up through the surface, a big smile on his face.

  “Clay,” she said, pushing her mouthpiece aside, “you scared me.”

  He put his arms around her, sang a few off-key notes she took to be the shark theme from Jaws.

  “I mean it,” she said.

  Clay stopped singing. He glanced down. “Hey, what’s that?”

  “What’s what?”

  “On the bottom.”

  Nell dipped her face into the water, gazed down through her mask. She saw something black lying on the sand, something man-made, maybe a box. She turned to Clay. That big smile was back on his face. She noticed he’d had way too much sun; this was the ninth day of vacation, their longest in years, maybe ever.

  “Too deep for me,” he said.

  Nell got the mouthpiece back between her teeth, dove down. Yes, a box, not big, not heavy. She carried it back to the surface.

  “What’s inside?” Clay said; still that big smile.

  Nell raised the lid. Inside, wrapped in waterproof plastic, she found another box, this one blue, the word Tiffany on the top. She opened it, too.

  “Oh, Clay.”

  “Happy anniversary,” said Clay.

  “But it’s months away.”

  “I couldn’t wait.”

  They bobbed up and down, the swell pushing them closer together. The sand beach on Little Parrot Cay pinkened under the late-afternoon sun. A flock of dark birds rose out of the palms, wheeled across the sky and headed north.

  “I don’t want to go back,” Nell said.

  “Maybe one day we won’t,” said Clay.

  “When?” said Nell. “Be specific.”

  Clay laughed. “June,” he said.

  “June?”

  “The thirty-third.”

  She laughed, too, pretended to throw a punch. He pretended to block it.

  They ate dinner on the patio of the house on the back, rocky side of Little Parrot Cay—spiny lobster, speared by Nell, conch fritters, cooked by Clay, white wine. The lights of North Eleuthera shone in the east, a fuzzy glow like a distant galaxy. Clay’s lobster fork clinked on the glass table. A shooting star went by—not an uncommon nighttime sight on Little Parrot Cay, but this one was very bright. Nell caught its reflected path in Clay’s eyes.

  “Life is good,” he said.

  Their bare feet touched under the table.

  Little Parrot Cay belonged to Clay’s friend—their friend—Duke Bastien. Nell and Clay spent one or two weekends a year on the Cay, free weekends, if Duke had had his way, but Clay insisted on paying. He’d researched Out-Island hotel prices, paid Duke the top rate. That was Clay, at least the professional side: by the book. In other parts of life he could be unpredictable—the shark episode, for example; and sometimes in bed.

  Like tonight. They’d been married for almost eighteen years, so it wasn’t surprising that he’d know her body. But to know things about it that she did not? After, lying in bed, the ocean breeze flowing through the wide-open sliders, Nell said, “How do you know?”

  But he was asleep.

  Nell slept, too. She’d had the best sleeps of her life on the Cay, untroubled visits to some deep, rejuvenating place. And she was on her way when Johnny appeared in her dreams, stepping out from behind a coral reef, but somehow dry. He wore pin-striped suit pants—Nell remembered that suit—was barefoot and naked above the waist. The red hole over his heart was tiny, almost invisible. So long since she’d seen him, in life or in dreams: she wanted to lick that tiny red hole, make it go away, but the scene changed.

  Nell awoke at dawn. The breeze had died down, leaving the bedroom cool, almost cold, but she was hot, her face clammy, an actual sweat drop rolling into the hollow of her throat. She glanced at Clay. He lay on his side, his back to her, very still. Light, weak and milky, left most of the room in shadow, but it illuminated a vein in Clay’s neck, throbbing slowly.

  Nell rose, saw herself in a mirror: her eyes were dark and worried. She went into the kitchen, dug through her purse, found her cell phone. No missed calls, specifically none from a 615 area code. That calmed her for a moment or two. She imagined Norah fast asleep in her dorm room, safe and sound. Then she began to find bad interpretations for the absence of a call, turn all the nonevidence upside down. She checked the time: 6:35. Too early to place a call of her own, not without appearing to be checking up, and Norah didn’t like that. Nell’s index finger trembled on the buttons. She made herself put the phone away.

  A bird chirped in the flamboyant tree that stood near the back door. Nell walked down the crushed-shell path to the beach side of the Cay. The sea lay flat and motionless as it often did at dawn, more like jelly than water. Nell slipped off her nightgown and dove in, half expecting viscous resistance, but there was none. She found a nice rhythm right away, body riding flat and high, hips controlling everything, forearms loose, stroke soft on entry, speeding up at the end, and most important, feeling the water, mantra of her college coach. Feeling the water came naturally to Nell, was the reason she’d been drawn to swimming in the first place; and no water felt like this. Nell swam around Little Parrot Cay.

  By the time she climbed back onto the beach, a light chop had ruffled up, as though her own motion had got things going. The sun, two or three handbreadths above the horizon, was already warm. Nell walked to the dock at the south end of the beach, turned on the hose and held it over her head, streami
ng the salt away, feeling fresh as this perfect morning. The truth was that back in her racing days, despite her love of the water and how coachable all her coaches said she was, she’d never been quite fast enough—a winner of heats now and then, but never a champion. Johnny, on the other hand: she remembered how she actually rocked in the water when he flew by in the next lane. She took a deep breath. He’d rocked her in the water. Remnants of some kind of bad dream came to life in her brain. The worried feeling, washed away, began to return. She turned off the hose, and was walking back up the beach to get her nightgown when she heard a faint drone in the sky.

  A plane appeared in the west; a seaplane, floats glowing in the sun. The wings tilted and the plane came down in a long, curving arc. Nell put on her nightgown. The plane skimmed onto the water with a splash and coasted up to the dock, pushing a silver wave. The lettering on the tail read: DK INDUSTRIES. Nell went out to the end of the dock. The pilot’s door opened.

  “Hi, darlin’,” said Duke Bastien. He threw her a line. Nell caught the end, looped it around a cleat. “Sorry to bust in,” he said.

  “Duke,” she said. “It’s your place.”

  “Bad manners is bad manners,” said Duke, stepping onto the dock. Duke was a big guy; it trembled under his weight. “Clay up?” he said.

  “I think he’s still sleeping.”

  “You had one of your swims?”

  Nell nodded, at the same time hiking up the shoulder strap of her nightgown, the fabric not transparent but very light. Duke was looking at her face, not her body; he actually did have good manners.

  “Are you two going fishing?” Nell said. Duke had a thirty-two foot inboard with a tuna tower, tied up on the other side of the dock. “Clay didn’t mention it.”

  “’Fraid not,” said Duke. “Mind getting him for me?”

  Nell walked up to the house. A warm breeze sprang up, blew some deep red blossoms out of the flamboyant tree and across her path. A phone rang as she went inside. Two cell phones lay on the kitchen counter, his and hers. It was Clay’s. She answered.

  “Hello, ma’am. Sergeant Bowman here. The chief handy?”

  “One moment,” Nell said.

  She went into the bedroom. Clay opened his eyes. He saw her and smiled. She knew that under the covers he was hard, all set for her to climb back in. That would have been nice. Nell covered the mouthpiece. “Sergeant Bowman’s on the phone. And Duke just flew in—he’s down at the dock.”

  “Duke’s here?”

  Clay sat up. He was one of those dark-haired, olive-skinned men who looked ten years younger than they were. The only sign of aging she could see on his face was a slight vertical groove on his brow, between the eyes. It deepened as he took the phone.

  “Hey, Wayne,” he said. “What’s up?”

  Clay listened for a second or two. “What the hell are you—” Then he went quiet, listened some more.

  “Norah?” said Nell, moving closer. “Is it something about Norah?”

  Clay shook his head, waved her away. He got out of bed, started pulling on a pair of shorts with his free hand, his erection deflating fast. Then he hurried out of the room. Nell followed.

  Clay sped up. He was a very fast walker when he wanted to be. Running after him down the crushed-shell path, she could barely keep up. His shoulder muscles stood out like ropes, rising to the base of his neck. He was still talking on the phone. She heard him say, “Just sit tight.” And: “I’m on my way.”

  “On your way where?” Nell called after him. “Is it Norah?”

  He didn’t seem to hear. Duke watched from the dock, arms folded across his chest.

  Nell ran faster, caught up to Clay, touched his back. “What?” she said. “Tell me.”

  Clay stuffed the phone in his pocket, whirled around. “Nell,” he said. “Go on up to the house.”

  “But—”

  His voice rose. “Did you hear me?”

  He’d never spoken to her like that, not in eighteen years. It stunned her. She stood on the path, frozen in place. Clay seemed frozen there, too, face flushed, mouth a little open. He started to say something, something quieter, but Duke, coming toward them, interrupted.

  “Just give us a minute or two, darlin’,” he said. “Everything’s fine.”

  “Is Norah all right?”

  Duke shot Clay a puzzled look. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

  Clay reached out, squeezed her hand. “I told you. It’s got nothing to do with Norah.”

  “Is it a business thing?”

  “Yeah,” said Duke. “Kinda.”

  They looked down at her, two big men, somehow reassuring just from the amount of space they occupied. Duke was an important businessman and one of Clay’s biggest supporters, went way back with him, but they weren’t in business together; Clay was the chief of police, not in business at all. Nell went back to the house, wondering what sort of business it could be.

  Her phone was ringing. She grabbed it: not Norah; a Belle Ville number, slightly familiar although she couldn’t place it.

  “Hello?”

  “Nell? Lee Ann Bonner.”

  Lee Ann Bonner, a reporter at the Belle Ville Guardian, had a daughter Norah’s age. They’d been sleepover friends in grade school, but Nell hadn’t talked to Lee Ann in years. She stepped onto the front terrace. Clay and Duke were talking on the dock, their heads close together.

  “Nell?”

  “Yes?”

  “I know this must be an…unsettling time,” Lee Ann said, “but I wondered if you had any comment at all, any reaction I could quote.”

  “I don’t understand,” Nell said. “Reaction to what?”

  Pause, a long one. A big fish jumped clear of the water, not far from the end of the dock, but neither man noticed. “You mean you haven’t heard?” Lee Ann said. “Alvin DuPree—they’re letting him go.”

  Nell lost her balance, caught hold of a patio chair. Alvin DuPree was serving a life sentence without parole. “Letting him go?”

  Lee Ann started in on a complicated answer Nell had trouble processing, all about something called the Justice Project, Hurricane Bernardine, FEMA, video cameras. Only the last sentence stuck in her mind, stuck like a fact sharpened at one end.

  “He didn’t do it.”

  CHAPTER 3

  The seaplane rose in a long semicircle. At first Little Parrot Cay was clear in Nell’s window. Then it got mixed up with other cays in the chain, and soon they were all just specks, and finally gone.

  Up in the cockpit, Clay and Duke sat side by side. The backs of their heads had a similar shape, Clay’s perhaps a little finer in some way; although their faces were very different, from this angle they could have been brothers.

  “What’s the Justice Project?” Nell said.

  Because of engine noise, or the fact that both men were wearing headsets, they didn’t hear.

  She spoke louder. “What’s the Justice Project?”

  Clay turned, raising one earphone. “You say something?”

  Nell repeated it once more.

  “Lawyers,” Clay said. “Don’t know much about them.”

  “But they’re wrong,” Nell said. “It’s all a mistake.”

  Clay nodded. He had fine eyes, soft, gentle brown and normally very clear, but now they looked blurry, and no particular color at all.

  “What kind of lawyers?” Nell said. “How did it happen?”

  “That’s what I’m going to find out,” Clay said, lowering the earpiece back in place and turning away. The plane entered a cloud, first wispy, then thick. A dull grayness closed in, taking away all dimensions, driving her into herself.

  “Did you get a good look at him?”

  “I was right there.” Which explained the blood on the front of her white T-shirt.

  The detective—she didn’t catch his name for the longest time—had a gentle manner and a soft voice. “Think you could identify the killer?”

  How could she not? She’d been right there.

&
nbsp; Back in Belle Ville, a squad car was waiting to take Clay to his office downtown. Duke drove Nell home. They—she, Clay and Norah, when school wasn’t in session—lived in the Heights, nicest neighborhood in Belle Ville next to Magnolia Glade. The route led through Lower Town, where the cleanup still went on, trucks, graders, front-end loaders—some bearing the DK Industries logo—clustered here and there. The stink of mud, rot, decomposition, hung in the air. Duke slid the windows up. From the porch of a lopsided house, the flood line halfway up the front door, a man watched them go by, his eyes expressionless but his posture accusatory, as though she or Duke, or people who rode in cars like Duke’s, were somehow to blame for all the destruction. She was seeing that posture more and more.

  “How long will it take for things to be normal?” she said.

  Duke frowned. “What things?”

  She gestured out the window.

  “Oh,” he said, frown fading. “Sewer piping goes in next month. After that the sidewalks and then it should be pretty quick.”

  Nell hadn’t been talking about sewers and sidewalks; she let it go. Duke dropped her off a few minutes later.

  Nell loved her house: Mediterranean-style, not too big, at the end of a cul-de-sac called Sandhill Way. Her favorite features were the terrace in back—a loggia, according to the real-estate agent who’d sold them the place—overlooking state-protected woods, and of course the lap pool, a Christmas present from Clay years before. She went inside, stepped over piles of mail on the tile floor. The message light was blinking on the hall phone, the word full in the little window.

  She entered the kitchen, noticed fruit flies hovering over a bowl of fruit on the kitchen table. It wasn’t like her to go away without putting that bowl in the fridge. Maybe she had put it away, maybe someone—

  “Norah?” she called. “Norah?”