“Rachel’s grades have been falling for the past year.”
“It’s hard losing a father figure. For the second time. Hasn’t been a real picnic for me, either.”
“Her school counselor says she’s been depressed.”
“I think that’s somewhat understandable, given the circumstances.”
“NDHS says you often leave her alone at night, while you’re ostensibly working.”
“Ostensibly? What is that supposed to mean?”
He closed the file. “One has to wonder, given the frequency…”
I stood up. “What are you implying?”
“Have you been drinking around Rachel?”
“I never drink at home.”
“I ask again, have you been drinking around Rachel?”
“Absolutely not. Look, I screwed up once. I wasn’t drinking that often.”
“If you make that claim at the hearing, NDHS will bring out your blood work and prove you a liar.”
“What the hell do they know about it?” I screamed. And immediately felt embarrassed. I was proving myself just as unstable as NDHS said I was. Playing into their hands. “Let those sons of bitches lose a husband! Let’s see how well they handle it.”
“We all know you’ve had some difficult trials. But the focus at the hearing will be on what’s best for Rachel.”
“I’m best for Rachel. She needs me!”
“Or is it more that you need her?”
I felt as if the top of my head was going to blow off. Literally. I gripped the edge of the man’s desk, consumed with fury. “Are you going to get me the damn hearing or not?”
“I’ll get the hearing,” he said quietly. “But I can guarantee the attorney for NDHS will be much rougher on you than I have been. And if you behave in court the way you’re behaving now, you haven’t got a snowball’s chance.”
It took him more than three hours to remove all of Annabel’s teeth. He used no anesthetic and nothing to stanch the bleeding. She bled profusely, down her chin, onto her bare neck and shoulders, mixing with saliva and coagulating to create a nasty bubbling paste. He had no means of measuring the quantity of blood lost, but it seemed enormous, an endless flow from those torn and ravaged gums. He had no idea if, as in the story, she would bleed to death, but it certainly seemed possible. And if she did not do so as a natural consequence, he knew how to see that she did.
After the first tooth was removed, she began to scream. He turned the Mozart up high. Fortunately, Camille’s boyfriend was not nearby; it would have been an inopportune time for a visit. After the third tooth, the screaming ceased, as did the threats about her mother’s revenge, the name-calling, the inappropriate remarks about his parentage. By the tenth tooth, she was entirely broken, shattered, incoherent. She began to hallucinate. She lost all sense of who and where she was. She called him Warren, made sexual advances. She alternated between pleading for mercy and babbling about her schoolwork. He was moved by her pain, truly. It took great force of will to remind himself that there was a higher purpose behind all this. The path to godhood was strewn with sacrifice.
“Am I dead?” she asked at one point just before unconsciousness descended, her pulpy gums mashing together. “I feel dead.”
“The sleep will come, my sweet Berenice.”
“Thasss good,” she said, and her last thought was expressed as a single word. “Why?”
“ ‘And still the phantasma of the teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy,’ ” he murmured, and with gentle fingers closed her eyelids for the last time. “Make a place for me in the firmament, my darling. Tell my love I will soon be reunited with her. That we will all be together once again.”
He walked upstairs and gazed out his window at the striking sunset. It was a glorious evening, bright and clear, a vivid orange and blue curtain draped across the skyline. He could almost feel the warmth of the light emanating from the Luxor pyramid, a forty-billion-candlepower beacon said to be the most powerful spotlight in the world. It shone for ten miles into space, carving a swath through the heavens. Was it the light that illumined sweet Virginia ’s face? Was it a trail of bread crumbs Annabel might follow? There was no basis for these beliefs in the prophecies. But it seemed so in his dreams, and the prophet did teach that dreams were a portal into the land of the ideal. If he could dream there, he could be there. And so he would. And so would they all.
After dark, I told Lisa I was going to the grocery store for some Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch. Hated to lie, but it seemed simpler than having an argument about whether I should do what I already knew I was going to do. I had to see O’Bannon. And I’d decided to confront him in an environment in which he couldn’t so easily blow me off.
Short drive with the top lowered down the streets of neon did me a world of good. Saw the transparent dome of the Fremont Street Exposition, my new favorite tourist joint. Basically, they tarted up the old Strip so it could compete with the new, and did a darn good job of it, in my opinion. Hey, beats seeing David Cassidy lip-sync or the ten billionth magic show, right?
Once I arrived at his house, I pounded on his front door, literally pounded. Guess my rage was still boiling. When I thought about what he’d done to me, after all I’d done for him, the cases I’d solved, only to have him shaft me the first time I’m vulnerable-it just infuriated me. I pounded and pounded, and when he didn’t come to the door immediately, I started shouting.
Some kid opened the door.
Okay, kid might be pushing it, but he seemed like a kid to me. He was probably in his early-twenties. He had peach fuzz on his upper lip and cheeks, and long brown hair that wasn’t very well groomed. He was dressed in a green T-shirt and was tall and lanky. Actually, my first thought was of Shaggy from those Scooby-Doo cartoons.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
I blinked. “I… don’t think so.”
We stared at each other.
“Is this the O’Bannon residence?”
“Uh-huh.”
More staring.
Finally he spoke: “Did they give you ice cream?”
“Umm… excuse me?”
“I wondered if maybe they gave you ice cream. They gave me ice cream. I like ice cream, don’t you?”
“I never had much of a sweet tooth. Who is they?”
“The hospital.”
“The… hospital?”
“I had to be in the hospital once and I didn’t like it. But they gave me ice cream and I liked that.”
I checked my reflection in the glass in the door. Did I look sick? Was I still wearing the ID bracelet? I had on a short-sleeved blouse, but I had replaced the gauze bandage on my wrist with a plain wide Band-Aid. “How do you know I’ve been in the hospital?”