She came to the front door in a bright tangerine sundress and heeled espadrilles. She looked slightly beyond great. She wore a bar pin with tiny silver bells. She did have bells on.
“Bells.” I smiled.
“You bet. You thought I was kidding.”
I took her in my arms right there on the red-brick front stoop, with blooming red and white impatiens and climbing roses all around us. I hugged Christine tightly against my chest and we started to kiss.
I was lost in her sweet, soft mouth, in her arms. My hands flew up to her face, lightly tracing her cheekbones, her nose, her eyelids.
The shock of intimacy was rare and overwhelming. So good, so fine, and missing for such a long time.
I opened my eyes and saw that she was looking at me. She had the most expressive eyes I’d ever seen. “I love the way you hold me, Alex,” she whispered, but her eyes said much more. “I love your touch.”
We backed into the house, kissing again.
“Do we have time?” She laughed.
“Shhh. Only a crazy person wouldn’t. We’re not crazy.”
“Of course we are.”
The bright tangerine sundress fell away to the floor. I liked the feel of shantung, but Christine’s bare skin felt even better. She was wearing Shalimar and I liked that, too. I had the feeling that I had been here before with her, maybe in a dream. It was as if I had been imagining this moment for a long time and now it was here.
She helped me with her white-lace demibra. We slid down the matching panties, two pairs of hands working together. Then we were naked, except for the fine rope necklace with a fire opal around her neck. I remembered a poem, something magical about the nakedness of lovers, but with just a touch of jewelry to set it off. Baudelaire? I bit gently into her shoulder. She bit back.
I was so hard it hurt, but the pain was exquisite, the pain had its own raw power. I loved this woman completely, and I was also turned on by her, every inch of her being.
“You know,” I whispered, “you’re driving me a little crazy.”
“Oh. Just a little?”
I let my lips trail down along her breasts, her stomach. She was lightly scented with perfume. I kissed between her legs and she began to gently call my name, then not so gently. I entered Christine as we stood against the cream living room wall, as we seemed to push our bodies into the wall.
“I love you,” I whispered.
“I love you, Alex.”
She was strong and gentle and graceful, all at the same time. We danced, but not in the metaphorical sense. We really danced.
I loved the sound of her voice, the softest cry, the song she sang when she was with me like this.
Then I was singing, too. I had found my voice again, for the first time in many years. I don’t know how long we were like that. Time wasn’t part of this. Something in it was eternal, and something was so very real and right now in the present.
Christine and I were soaking wet. Even the wall behind me was slippery and wet. The wild ride at the beginning, the rocking and rolling, had transformed itself into a slower rhythm that was even stronger. I knew that no life was right without this kind of passion.
I was barely moving inside her. She tightened around me and I thought I could feel the edges of her. I surged deeper and Christine seemed to swell around me. We began to move into each other, trying to get closer. We shuddered, and got closer still.
Christine climaxed, and then the two of us came together. We danced and we sang. I felt myself melting into Christine and we were both whispering yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. No one could touch us here, not Thomas Pierce, no one.
“Hey, did I tell you I loved you?”
“Yes, but tell me again.”
Chapter 121
KIDS ARE so damn much smarter than we usually give them credit for. Kids know just about everything, and they often know it before we do.
“You two are late! You have a flat tire-or were you just smooching?” Jannie wanted to know as we came in the front door. She can say some outrageous things and get away with them. She knows it, and pushes the envelope every chance she gets.
“We were smooching,” I said. “Satisfied?”
“Yes I am,” Jannie smiled. “Actually, you’re not even late. You’re right on time. Perfect timing.”
Dinner with Nana and the children wasn’t an anticlimax. It was such a sweet, funny time. It was what being home is all about. We all pitched in and set the table, served the food, then ate with reckless abandon. The meal was swordfish steaks, scalloped potatoes, summer peas, buttermilk biscuits. Everything was served piping hot, expertly prepared by Nana, Jannie, and Damon. Dessert was Nana’s world-famous lemon meringue pie. She made it specially for Christine.
I believe the simple yet complex word that I’m searching for is joy.
It was so obvious around the dinner table. I could see it in the bright and lively eyes of Nana and Damon and Jannie. I had already seen it in Christine’s eyes. I watched her at dinner and I had the thought that she could have been somebody famous in Washington, anything she wanted to be. She chose to be a teacher, and I loved that about her.
We repeated stories that had been in the family for years, and are always repeated at such occasions. Nana was lively and funny all through the night. She gave us her best advice on aging: “If you can’t recall it, forget it.”
Later on, I played the piano and sang rhythm-and-blues songs. Jannie showed off and did the cakewalk to a jazzy version of “Blueberry Hill.” Even Nana did a minute of jitterbugging, protesting, “I really can’t dance, I never could dance,” as she did just beautifully.
One moment, one picture, sticks out in my mind, and I’m sure it will be there until the day I die. It was just after we’d finished dinner and were cleaning up the kitchen.
I was washing dishes in the sink, and as I reached to get another plate I stopped in midturn, frozen in the moment.
Jannie was in Christine’s arms, and the two of them looked just beautiful together. I had no idea how she had gotten there, but they were both laughing and it was so natural and real. As I never had before, I knew and understood that Jannie and Damon were missing so much without a mother.
Joy-that’s the word. So easy to say, so hard to find in life sometimes.
In the morning, I had to go back to work.
I was still the dragonslayer.
Chapter 122
I SHUT MYSELF AWAY to think, to quietly obsess about Thomas Pierce and Mr. Smith.
I made suggestions to Kyle Craig about moves that Pierce might make and precautions he should think about taking. Agents were dispatched to watch Pierce’s apartment in Cambridge. Agents camped out at his parents’ house outside Laguna Beach, and even at the gravesite of Isabella Calais.
Pierce had been passionately in love with Isabella Calais! She had been the only one for him! Isabella and Thomas Pierce! That was the key-Pierce’s obsessive love for her.
He’s suffering from unbearable guilt, I wrote in my notepad.
If my hypothesis is right, then what clues are missing?
Back at Quantico, a team of FBI profilers was trying to solve the problem on paper. They had all worked closely with Pierce in the BSU. Absolutely nothing in Pierce’s background was consistent with the psychopathic killers they had dealt with before. Pierce had never been abused, either physically or sexually. There was no violence of any kind in his background. At least not as far as anyone knew. There was no warning, no hint of madness, no sign until he blew sky-high. He was an original. There had never been a monster anything like him. There were no precedents.
I wrote: Thomas Pierce was deeply in love. You are in love, too.
What would it mean to murder the only person in the world whom you loved?
Chapter 123
I COULDN’T MANAGE any sympathy, or even a modicum of clinical empathy, for Pierce. I despised him, and his cruel, cold-blooded murders, more than any of the other killers I had taken down-even Soneji. Kyle Craig and Sampson felt the same, and so did most of the Bureau, especially the good folks in Behavioral Science. We were the ones in a rage state now. We were obsessed with stopping Pierce. Was he using that to beat our brains in?