“I know what to do, so let me do it.” Then, taking a second look at my face: “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I said, but I didn’t know if I was or not. I kept remembering how Cathy Morse had looked mounting to the Portraits in Lightning stage all those years ago, a pretty little Sooner gal with tanned legs flashing beneath a denim skirt with a frayed hem. Every pretty girl carries her own positive charge, Jacobs had said, but somewhere along the way, Cathy’s charge had turned negative. No mention of a husband, although a girl that good-looking must not have lacked for suitors. No mention of children, either.
Maybe she liked girls, I thought, but that was pretty lame.
“Here you go, sugar,” Bree said. She turned the laptop so I could see it more easily. “Same newspaper.”
WOMAN IN DEATH JUMP FROM CYRUS AVERY MEMORIAL BRIDGE, the headline read. Cathy Morse had left no explanatory note behind, and her grieving parents were mystified. “I wonder if it wasn’t somebody pushed her,” Mrs. Morse said… but according to the article, foul play had been ruled out, although it didn’t say how.
Has he done it before, mister? Mr. Morse had asked me back in 1992. This after punching my old fifth business in the face and splitting his lip. Has he knocked other ones for a loop the way he knocked my Cathy?
Yes, sir, I thought now. Yes, sir, I believe he has.
“Jamie, you don’t know for sure,” Bree said, touching my shoulder. “Sixteen years is a long time. It could have been something else entirely. She might have found out she had a bad cancer, or some other fatal disease. Fatal and painful.”
“It was him,” I said. “I know it, and by now I think you do, too. Most of his subjects are fine afterwards, but some go away with time bombs in their heads. Cathy Morse did, and it went off. How many others are going to go off in the next ten or twenty years?”
I was thinking I could be one of them, and Bree surely knew that, too. She didn’t know about Hugh, because that wasn’t my story to tell. He hadn’t had a recurrence of his prismatics since the night at the tent revival—and that one was probably brought on by stress—but it could happen again, and although we didn’t talk about it, I’m sure he knew it as well as I did.
Time bombs.
“So now you’re going to find him.”
“You bet.” The obituary of Catherine Anne Morse was the last piece of evidence I needed, the one that made the decision final.
“And persuade him to stop.”
“If I can.”
“If he won’t?”
“Then I don’t know.”
“I’ll go with you, if you want.”
But she didn’t want. It was all over her face. She had started the assignment with an intelligent young woman’s zest for pure research, and there had been the lovemaking to add extra spice, but now the research was no longer pure and she had seen enough to scare her badly.
“You’re not going anywhere near him,” I said. “But he’s been off the road for eight months now and his weekly TV show’s into reruns. I need you to find out where he’s hanging his hat these days.”
“I can do that.” She set her laptop aside and reached under the sheet. “But I’d like to do something else first, if you’re of a mind.”
I was.
Shortly before Labor Day, Bree Donlin and I said our goodbyes in that same bed. They were very physical ones for the most part, satisfying to both of us, but also sad. For me more than her, I think. She was looking forward to life as a pretty, unattached career girl in New York; I was looking forward to the dreaded double-nickel in less than two years. I thought there would be no more lively young women for me, and on that score I have been proven absolutely correct.
She slipped out of bed, long-legged and beautifully naked. “I found what you wanted,” she said, and began rummaging through her purse on the dresser. “It was harder than I expected, because he’s currently going under the name of Daniel Charles.”
“That’s my boy. Not exactly an alias, but close.”
“More of a precaution, I think. The way celebrities will check into a hotel under a fake name—or a variation of their real one—to fool the autograph hounds. He leased the place where he’s living as Daniel Charles, which is legal as long as he’s got a bank account and the checks don’t bounce, but sometimes a fella just has to use his real name if he’s going to stay on the right side of the law.”
“What sometimes would you be talking about in this case?”
“He bought a car last year in Poughkeepsie, New York—not a fancy one, just a plain-vanilla Ford Taurus—and registered it under his real name.” She got back into bed and handed me a slip of paper. “Here you go, handsome.”
Written on it was Daniel Charles (aka Charles Jacobs, aka C. Danny Jacobs), The Latches, Latchmore, New York 12561.
“What’s The Latches when it’s at home with its feet up?”
“The house he’s renting. Actually an estate. A gated estate, so be aware. Latchmore is a little north of New Paltz—same zip code. It’s in the Catskills, where Rip Van Winkle bowled with the dwarfs back in the day. Except then—umm, your hands are nice and warm—the game was called ninepins.”
She snuggled closer, and I said what men of my age find themselves saying more and more frequently: I appreciated the offer, but didn’t feel myself capable of taking her up on it just then. In retrospect, I sure wish I’d tried a little harder. One last time would have been nice.
“That’s okay, hon. Just hold me.”
I held her. I think we drowsed, because when I became aware again, the sun had moved from the bed to the floor. Bree jumped up and began to dress. “Got to shake. A thousand things to do today.” She hooked her bra, then looked at me in the mirror. “When are you going to see him?”
“Probably not until October. Hugh’s got a guy coming in from Minnesota to sub for me, but he can’t get here until then.”
“You have to stay in touch with me. Email and phone. If I don’t hear from you every day you’re out there, I’ll get worried. I might even have to drive up and make sure you’re okay.”
“Don’t do that,” I said.
“You just stay in touch, white boy, and I won’t have to.”
Dressed, she came and sat on the side of the bed.
“You might not need to go at all. Has that idea crossed your mind? There’s no tour scheduled, his website’s gone stagnant, and there’s nothing but reruns on his TV show. I came across a blog post the other day titled Where in the World Is Pastor Danny? The discussion thread went on for pages.”
“Your point being?”
She took my hand, twined her fingers in mine. “We know—well, not know, but we’re pretty sure—that he’s hurt some people along the way while he was helping others. Okay, that’s done and can’t be undone. But if he’s stopped healing, he won’t be hurting anyone else. In that case, what would be the point of confronting him?”
“If he’s stopped healing, it’s because he’s made enough money to move on.”
“To what?”
“I don’t know, but judging from his track record, it could be dangerous. And Bree… listen.” I sat up and took her other hand. “Everything else aside, someone needs to call him to account for what he’s done.”
She lifted my hands to her mouth, where she kissed first one and then the other. “But should that someone be you, honey? After all, you were one of his successes.”
“I think that’s why. Also, Charlie and I… we go back. We go way back.”