Wild Horses

Chapter Twenty-Five

It was dark when Jim got back to Dallas, a day later than he'd told Emma to expect him. The rental car lot was closed for the night. He took his time filling out the paperwork, dropping it and the car keys through the slot in the Avis office door. He rechecked his watch, although he didn't need to. After dark on a summer night was more than late enough for Emma to have put Suzy to bed, more than late enough for the little girl to have fallen asleep. Emma would excuse him for not calling her to give him a ride home, knowing she couldn't leave Suzy alone.

There was only a single light downstairs when his cab pulled up at the house. Emma opened the door before he could click the automatic unlock. She moved back to let him enter, without a smile,  without a kiss.

"You didn't have to take a cab," she said. "You could have called."

"It was late. I didn't want to wake Suzy."

She stood in the middle of the front hall, not giving him room to pass her. "The agency could have sent someone to pick up the car in the morning."

"I didn't think of that." Setting his bag on the floor, he extended his arm toward her. She ignored the invitation. The lamp on the hall's console table left her eyes in shadow.

"What did you think about, driving all the way back from wherever you went? Were you afraid I'd check the mileage on the car?"

"Emma, this isn't like you."

"Where were you, Jim?"

"I'm tired. We can talk in the morning."

"Can we? Or will you slip out again while I'm still asleep. You'd have a good excuse -- plenty of work to catch up on."

"Honey."

"I've got to know, Jim. It's our kids' future at stake here. Not just yours and mine."

"For God's sake, Em, what are you thinking? That I was with another woman?"

She drew a sobbing breath and stepped back a couple of paces. The lamplight was now on her face, and the sight broke his heart. 

"OK, let's talk. I went to see a woman, all right, a rather elderly woman."

She looked at him as if unsure whether to believe his words.

"I went to see Mrs. Lily Kotay. She's," he hesitated, "she's Jim Kotay's mother."

"I thought -- "

"She had some disturbing news, and I couldn't refuse to see her. I've always felt responsible --"

"Oh, Jim."

"I'd bought an annuity for her as soon as I could afford it. She's a widow. No other kids, nobody to take care of her."

"Why didn't you say something? Why all the mystery?"

"I didn't know what was going on myself until I got there, until I saw it. I'm still not sure." 

He also wasn't sure how much to say about what his mother's friend Fran Ross had found when she visited the old paupers cemetery the day after he arrived in Vista. There was the frantic phone call to Lily, the scene at the graveyard when they arrived, the shotgun-blasted remains of Sherman's pickup. Unfortunately, without any sign of Sherman.

"Someone had dug up her son's grave," he said, and heard Emma's gasp of horror. That, he decided, was enough truth for one night.

***

Sherman was waiting for Jim two days later when he walked into the coffee shop at Half Price Books. It was the venue on neutral territory he had insisted on. He nodded to acknowledge Sherman's presence, ordered an americano from a multiply-pierced barista, and strolled with as much casualness as he could muster to the table where Sherman sat, a laptop open in front of him.

"Dr. Farouk, good of you to come," Sherman said as if they were meeting to talk over a minor business deal. He rose, extending his hand. Jim sat, ignoring the offered handshake.

Acknowledging the insult with a sardonic smile, Sherman turned the laptop's screen toward him. "I think you'll be pleased with the quality of the pictures I mentioned. The sample I sent you doesn't do them justice."

"What do you want?" Jim asked.

"Why are people always saying that? This isn't about what you can do for me. It's about what I can do for you."

Sherman's teeth flashed in something that wasn't a smile, and Jim balled a fist in his pocket to keep it from going straight to Sherman's jaw.

Setting the laptop to one side so that its screen was visible to both of them, Sherman clicked on one of the images to enlarge it. It was a picture of a skeletal hand.

Jim didn't want to look at it, but he couldn't keep from staring. Jilani's hand. Of course, it would be a skeleton now. He was a radiologist who looked at images of bones every day. But they weren't the bones of a friend for whose death he was responsible, who had died trying to help him. And how had he repaid that friend's sacrifice?

He touched the computer screen gently. The sun through the coffee shop window glinted on the plain gold band Emma had put on his finger in the office of the justice of the peace who had married them. Not that they were really married. She'd slipped the ring onto the third finger of his right hand. There was no ring finger on his left.

The ring caught Sherman's eye. "You wife would probably love to have this picture framed for your desk, maybe an early Father's Day gift? Appropriate for a radiologist, don't you think? You'll notice it's a left hand, but it's perfect. All the fingers intact. Completely intact."

All the fingers were indeed intact, but the fresh break in the bones of the wrist was evident too. It wasn't just that Sherman had dug up Jilani's grave, that he'd taken pictures of the pathetic remains. He'd cut off the hand, carried it like some horrible trophy. Jim forced himself to swallow his disgust.

"If there's a point to this charade, you'd better get to it. I don't have much time."

"Of course," Sherman said. "You're a busy man, probably on your way to work, so I'll get to the point. Here you are, a doctor, a couple of kids on the way. Do they fire doctors for being late to work? No? How about identity theft? How about fraud?"

He leaned close. "How about murder?"

Jim dashed his coffee over the computer.

The watching barista gasped, sprinting around the counter with a handful of paper napkins. Sherman waved her away without a word and pushed his chair back until it tipped onto its rear legs. 

"I didn't expect you of all people to be so clumsy, Dr. Farouk. Lucky for both of us this thing's still under warranty. And that I have a backup."

Jim stood, looking down at him.

"Give me Suzy and we'll call it quits, shall we?" Sherman said. "With such a big family to provide for -- your mother too, now -- I'd hate there to be any question about your medical license. I know how tough it is not to be able to earn a living."

"If you want a job, I can find you one."

"What I want is my daughter."

"Then maybe you should spent your time doing something worthwhile, something that would make you fit to be the father she needs." Jim stepped to the door, opened it.

"Have it your way, then, Farouk. Or should I say, Kotay? Don't say I never offered you a chance to settle all this nicely."

Jim didn't reply. He walked out, across the parking lot to his SUV. Maybe Emma and Suzy should take a vacation. One without him. Somewhere far, far away where they would be safe from Sherman.