Riptide by Michael Prescott Read Free Book Online Page B

he had long periods of normality interspersed with brief spells of irrational behavior. At those times he was uncommunicative and morose. His conversation didn’t track. He would make strange associative leaps. He would get angry for no reason. Occasionally he was violent, breaking small items, slamming doors. On the rare occasions when Marjorie spoke of it, years later, she stressed that he never laid a hand on her. But she was afraid he might.
    Aldrich became unpredictable. Some days he didn’t show up at the office. When he did see patients, he would forget their names, ask the same questions over and over, misunderstand their responses. Challenged, he would erupt in rage. Once, he began screaming at the white-haired nurse who ran his reception desk. She quit, and he couldn’t find a replacement.
    After the illness was finally diagnosed, Aldrich was sent away to a private psychiatric clinic. He came back seeming clearheaded and calm, almost normal. But the improvements didn’t last.
    When Jennifer was two years old, Marjorie gave birth to a second child. A son this time.
    Perhaps it was the added responsibility that pushed Aldrich over the edge of the precipice he’d been walking. Or perhaps he had been headed over the edge for so long that even the birth of a son couldn’t save him.
    A week after Marjorie returned from the hospital, Aldrich went out to the tool shed in the backyard, and there was a single percussive noise, startling the doves that congregated by the birdbath. Marjorie found him with the gun still in his mouth, his hands gripping the barrel, his fingers clamped down in a final nervous spasm. The back of his head had come off with a gout of blood that sprayed the hammers and power drills pegged to the wall.
    Jennifer was home at the time, but at age two she had no understanding of what had happened. Her daddy was there in the morning, and he was not there in the afternoon. That was all.
    When she was a little older, she grasped that her daddy hadn’t just gone away. He died. He was taken up to heaven. She knew no details. Perhaps some nascent intuitive sense prevented her from asking.
    She was nine years old when a gossipy student in her third-grade homeroom told her the story. Your daddy shot himself. I heard my parents talk about it. They said he went crazy and blew his brains out. Bang!
    Jennifer ran crying out of the room. The teacher found her in the bathroom, slumped on the floor and sobbing.
    Her mother was called to pick her up early. In the living room, Marjorie sat down with her and told her it was true.
    Why’d he do it, Mommy?
    I don’t know, Jenny. He’d been acting funny for a long time.
    Funny how?
    Just...different. He was sick. And the medicine they gave him wasn’t working.
    He was a doctor. Doctors don’t get sick.
    Sometimes they do.

    It wasn’t much of an explanation. But to this day, it was all she had.

 
     
     
    seven
     
    The buzz of the doorbell brought her back. She put down the stack of photos and opened the door.
    Casey Wilkes stood there, a blue-uniformed figure nearly blocking the view of the black-and-white squad car parked at a hydrant. That was one advantage of being a cop; he never got a ticket. And as a sergeant, he typically rode alone.
    “You okay?” he asked.
    “They’re dead people, Casey. They’re not going to hurt me.”
    He stepped inside, instantly dominating her space without even trying. He wore all his gear—Sam Browne belt with its holstered service pistol and baton; portable radio; handcuffs clinking as he walked. She was always amazed at how much stuff a patrol cop had on, the sheer weight of it, like a suit of chain mail.
    For all that, he was lithe, not bulky. His training routine, he’d told her, focused on aerobic conditioning; he had the lean, toned physique of a swimmer. No paunch, no baby fat, nothing soft about him except his wispy blondish hair.
    He glanced around the living room. “Where’s the cellar?”
    “Over there.