Page 32 of Go Home (Kate Valentine #1)

It was a beautiful morning, cold, but bright, the leaves every shade of gold and copper.

“I guess I should be Mother,” said Kate’s mother, Catherine. They were taking tea on the balcony at the back of her townhouse, overlooking the garden. Chomsky and Worf, Catherine’s twin Red Setters, were chasing each other through piles of fallen leaves.

“Mrs. V.,” Marcus said, thickly, crumbs falling down his jersey. “The scones.” He made an “o” of his finger and thumb. “Fantastic.”

She smiled in delight but instantly stood up and took the plate.

“You need more.”

“No, Mrs. V., honestly, I’m fine-”

“Nonsense, I made dozens.”

“Mom, he –”

Kate sighed with resignation as her mother flitted back towards the kitchen.

“Sorry. She misses having a man to feed.”

“Cheryl’s mom’s the same. If we come around, she won’t sit down; she just zips about, fixing things. You have to get quite rude, you know, to get the lady to actually sit down in her own home.”

Kate laughed, realizing that she hadn’t heard herself laugh in a long while.

“It’s that generation of women. I mean, Mom’s a Professor of Linguistics. But she still thinks her job is to feed everybody.”

“Well, you look like you’ve been benefiting from it.”

“Are you saying I look fat?”

“I’m saying you look well and rested. And that’s good.”

“A very diplomatic answer. Thank you. And it’s been great staying with Mom. We’ve been curling up under the blanket watching old Spencer Tracy movies. Taking the dogs on the dunes. You know, normal stuff.”

There was a pause. The wind blew a little chillier.

The memory of those final moments with Cox was still close at hand.

However many scones she ate, however many cozy girls’ nights-in she had with her mom.

Elijah Cox was in jail, awaiting trial. Like the victors in a battle, he and Denton seemed to have divvied up her unconscious mind: Denton dreams filled her nights, whereas the days were interrupted by memories of Cox under the church, imagined scenes from his trial.

But they had not won. Why did she feel that they had?

Because something about Cox continued to trouble her.

Something he’d said, but she couldn’t retrieve. She knew it mattered. But why?

“I spoke to Winters.”

“Oh, yeah? What did she say?”

“I said it was time to come back. She said there was no rush, and you were working fine with Gunnarson. And of course, she reminded me what happened the last time I came back too early.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“Because I understand how that must make you feel. And I’m sorry, because I made you feel like that, too.”

“I’m lucky to have you, looking out for me.”

Returning with the scones, Catherine seemed to think she’d intruded on some intense private moment. Because she made a great show of having forgotten the jam and needing to go back for it.

“Gunnarson’s okay. But I prefer working with you.” He looked at her. “When I saw Cox with you – attacking you, I –” He looked over at the dogs, playing tug of war with a piece of rope. “I’ve been hoping you’d say you were ready to come back. But Kate, I…”

“What is it…?”

“You hear that, Mrs. V.?” Marcus said suddenly, seizing upon the second return of Mrs. Valentine as a diversion. Though a diversion from what, exactly , Kate couldn’t begin to fathom. “She’s returning to the fray.”

“Yes, well, you won’t be surprised to hear I don’t approve. And that’s not for selfish reasons. I’m flying off to a conference at Oxford next week, so I won’t be here in any case. I wish you’d just give it a week or two more.”

“You said it yourself, Mom, you’re not going to be here. And I don’t want to be here, or in my apartment, bouncing off the walls on my own.”

“I know. But you’re too like your father.

I used to say to him: you’re not the only heart surgeon out there.

Nobody, in any organization, is indispensable, and nobody should ever think they are.

There were others before you, there’ll be others after you.

And actually, if everyone did behave like you and drag themselves into work even when they felt terrible… ”

Kate sat back in her chair. She’d zoned out of the conversation, which wasn’t a conversation, in any case, just a lecture, albeit one with good intentions.

Something about her mother’s words had drawn her thoughts back to the beast in the strange story of the King of Tarshish.

And then, as if her mind was skipping across stones in a brook, to Cox, and what he’d said just before he tried to choke the life out of her. What he’d promised.

She turned to Marcus. “Can you give me a ride somewhere?”

Marcus frowned at her. “Sure. Where?”

“I need to go to the state penitentiary.”

++++++

Prison shrank some people, and it expanded others.

Mob guys, she noticed, tended to look rather pathetic in prison scrubs.

Without the handmade suits and shoes, the diamond pinkie rings and the luxury vehicles, they had no way of broadcasting their power; they just looked like unhealthy men with bad skin and thinning hair.

By contrast, the average low-ranking gang-member was in his element doing a three or a five.

Protected by his affiliations, safely beyond the reach of the mothers of his children, and able to work the system without fear of arrest or detection, many a street corner dealer surged in status on the prison wing, his growing confidence apparent in every cocky step and gesture.

No wonder they kept coming back for more.

It was typical of Elijah Cox that he’d neither grown nor shrunk, seemed neither oppressed by his surroundings nor particularly pleased by them.

The walls and bars didn’t seem to exist for him.

He was, however, unable to contain his delight at getting a visit from Kate.

They were in a private interview room, with a thick sheet of glass dividing them.

In the background, muted, the constant soundtrack of jail, like a junk yard.

“Nice scarf,” Cox said, dripping with sarcasm. “Tell me, do you get flashbacks when you tie it? Remember what it felt like with my hands around your throat? What’s worse, Kate? The daytime memories, or the dreams at night?”

“Screw you, Cox.” She wanted very much to untie the scarf now. But the bruising was still very visible. She didn’t want him gloating over that.

“Come now,” he said. “You came all this way to see me. Let’s not fight. Ask me anything, Kate.”

“Who killed my father?”

He smiled thinly. She cursed herself inside for asking the question so directly. Then again, the creep knew how much she wanted to know. So it wouldn’t matter how she phrased the question, he’d still get a kick out of withholding the answer.

“It would make such a difference to know, wouldn’t it?” he asked – in a strangely ordinary manner. She still didn’t reply.

“The truth is, Kate, I don’t know. That hasn’t been revealed to me. I could pretend to know,” he said, holding his hands up, in the sort of “trust me” gesture favored by politicians. “But I don’t. I don’t know where he fits in.”

“Isn’t that kind of like the Nuremberg Defense? I was only obeying orders ? I thought you’d have something more original to say.”

“Kate, I didn’t kill him, Denton didn’t kill him. I don’t know who killed him.”

“So why did you kill George Palmer? The detective? You’re pleading guilty to that, aren’t you? So why lie about my father?”

“I’m not lying about your father. As you point out, I’d have no reason to kill him; it would offer no benefit. I murdered Palmer because I had to get you to come to the church. You were supposed to come alone. That’s where things unraveled.”

The man looked genuinely irritated, as if the whole affair had wound up as an irritation, like a flat tire or a canceled flight. It struck Kate for the first time that Cox might actually be telling the truth.

“That’s another thing I wanted to discuss with you, Cox.

Because it seems to me that you evoke the Divine Will and the power of prophecy when you feel like it.

You might say that me bringing my partner along was a mistake.

But equally you might say it was all part of God’s plan.

You say you went to all that trouble, arranging a double sacrifice to God.

And now it hasn’t happened. So either God is pretty terrible at sticking to his plans, or you’re just a shitty prophet. ”

Cox shook his head, smiling, before he recited.

“ Not a drinking cup cracked, not a boot sullied, a sword blunted or a girl’s smile unseen…

” You know it. Book of Bezalel? The latest pseudepigraph – they think he was a Jewish soldier in the 10 th century Turkish army.

Complaining about blisters and his lost kit, but ultimately comforted because he knows it’s all God’s doing.

I especially like the ‘girl’s smile unseen. ’”

“Aren’t you a little bit, you know, disappointed? “

Cox shook his head and smiled. “Everything happens according to His will. And he reveals it, piece by piece. It’s like a map.

People like you, they see next to nothing, the ground under their feet, if they’re lucky.

People like me, with the gift of prophecy, we can see the next ten, twenty, thirty miles.

Only God has the atlas. So, if you and I didn’t die that night, it’s because God intends for us to witness something else. The next stage.”

“Is that what you meant with that story, about the King of Tarshish?”

Cox awarded her an approving nod. “Well done. You plodded your way there in the end. I had almost begun to think it was beyond you. Thanks be to heaven.” It wasn’t even sarcasm.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, as if he was savoring a mountain breeze.

“It’s all so much bigger than you can grasp.

The beast is under your feet, above you, in the walls, it is in the wind and the sea, it is waiting behind every darkened door.

” He opened his eyes and stared at her. “It is everywhere.”

“What does that even mean?”

He leaned forward suddenly. Despite the glass, she couldn’t help shrinking back.

He whispered the words, his eyes boring into her and at the same time seemingly fixed on some inner point, far, far away. “After Denton, after me, there are many more disciples. And there will be many more deaths. The world will be washed in blood, Kate.”

“Let me out.”

“Washed in blood. Death has only just begun. And you are its witness.”

She pressed the buzzer. “Let me out!”