“Oh, yes, I was born in Kyoto. I am issei, a true pioneer. My husband is yonsei. Our children are gosei when they will be born — old-style Canadian.”
“Can you translate Ochiba Shigura?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Doesn’t it mean anything?”
“Not in English.”
“In Japanese.”
“Yes,” she said. “Sometimes it is difficult to translate from one culture to another, Mr. Morgan.”
Her husband came out, bringing food that he divided among the three of them. They each leaned over and hand-fed the more confident fish. The Ochiba Shigura came directly to Morgan, trying to shunt aside the Chagoi, which was voraciously mounting his half-closed hand. It gave up and swam to Ikuko where it ate delicately from her open palm tilted almost to water level.
“Eugene,” Ikuko announced, “I do not like the Takai Kohaku best. I like the Ochiba Shigura.”
Miranda sat up suddenly, coming into consciousness in an upright position. Words tumbled through her mind. She was in mid-argument, anticipating the next twist in a convoluted rhetoric. “Thirdly,” she muttered with a throaty rasp into the darkness, “number three, Morgan, is why?” The words sounded less convincing outside her head where they floated hollowly in the thick air and dissipated into the darkness. “My third point …” she continued sub-vocally, trying to recover her composure, knowing illusion was everything in a debate and she had to seem to be in command of her inner voice. What were points one and two? “My third point, Morgan …” she ventured, a little reassured by the sound of his name reverberating inside her skull. “Morgan, the tertiary element to my deductive argument is —”
She must have passed out from the effort of sitting up, because when she became aware again she was sprawled across the bed with her knees on the floor. They were bruised as if she had fallen in a posture almost of prayer.
Without moving she drifted into a dream where everything was bright and beautiful but nothing was distinct or familiar.
Flung suddenly back into wakefulness, she crawled onto the bed and stretched out. She had to think. If she could think through the pain, the pain would leave.
One — it was as though she could see a number one shaped like a child’s giant birthday candle. Eleanor Drummond had come here to monitor Robert Griffin’s proclivities for nasty behaviour. She was his conscience; he had none of his own. She needed Jill to see his death as righteous, to restore innocence to her daughter. Ambiguous! To prove Jill’s innocence to herself.
Miranda rehearsed the scenario so that she could explain it to Morgan. Time passed.
Two. The number hovered over her head, crudely formed like a numeral made from a twisted balloon. The letter authorizing her as executor was delivered posthumously. Eleanor must have known she would figure that out and go along with it, anyway! The dead woman had known things about her even she didn’t fathom.
Number three must be coming up! Miranda waited for a numeral to appear. A constellation of stars hovered in the middle distance, forming the number. An image of three crosses on Calvary loomed into focus in the guise of a Roman numeral. Threes swarmed her like the aggressive graphics on Sesame Street, then faded to black.
Okay, she thought. Eleanor had recognized Miranda when Morgan and she were beside Griffin’s body. The woman had already planned to die. She had set up a scene where Griffin might have been reading, then had impulsively, on a morbid whim, walked out to the pond and ended it all. She had seeded obvious notions of suicide in his case, but why? So the police would suspect murder. Later they’d do the same when her body was discovered. Terrible crime, a double homicide. Distasteful perhaps, but not a disgrace. One problem: how could Eleanor guarantee her daughter’s inheritance?
And then Jill’s mother saw Miranda!
Miranda searched the darkness for numbers, but there were only a few strands of dazzling red surging against the insides of her eyelids.
What if they had driven Griffin to it?
No, Morgan, listen! You can’t leave me out of the equation.
And what if Molly’s transformation into Eleanor Drummond was the beginning of murder? Perhaps until then he could have justified rape as a response to his victim’s desires, the voyeur seduced by his vision. But she had backed him against the wall, the way she had Roger Poole, the man who beat up his kids. Instead of retiring, perhaps into fantasy, Griffin had turned to something more sinister — a metamorphosis of his own. He again had the power. What if she had known that and believed it was her fault?
A brief thought snapped like a whip through her mind. The horror, that summer, was learning she had the capacity to make a man monstrous! That was what she couldn’t forgive herself for.
They — Griffin and Eleanor — had sustained each other by mutual hatred, but Eleanor had another life. He had only this dungeon and his beloved koi.
Miranda doubted they were lovers.
He had needed Eleanor’s soul. Dried walnuts?
No, Morgan, no. That’s your expression, but no. The soul is whatever’s inside that gives a human being moral dimension, like air in a balloon. You can’t see it, but it’s there. Don’t give up on souls because you’ve given up on God.
Griffin had needed Eleanor’s soul because he didn’t have one. And after he finished with their daughter, he knew Eleanor’s soul would be gone, as well, and it would be time to die.
And he did finish with her, with all his victims. Perhaps because of their enfeeblement or their desperate affection. Maybe because they were no longer innocent; no longer incarnations of his virgin mother.
You check, Morgan. I bet she died just before all this started, before his watching got out of hand. You check it for me, okay?
And he had left them in here, turned up the controls. They had died by desiccation, their juices gone, their corpses dried to the bone. This was an execution chamber. How many had died here between Molly and her? Was she the first?
Oh, my God, Morgan, I’m tired!
Miranda could feel the overwhelming rage rising within her, and with bitter irony she realized she no longer had enough strength to sustain it.
Eleanor had wanted them to think they were lovers. That was strategic. Better her daughter was the offspring of a wealthy eccentric and his mistress than sired by a serial killer. Better they were lovers than she was the keeper of his conscience, and a failure at that.
Jill’s mother had counted on Miranda being compelled to understand her connection with Griffin. She had sent her daughter to the morgue. She was sure Molly Bray and Eleanor Drummond would merge when Miranda met her daughter. The dead woman had known everything about her. She was a knowledge broker — that was her power, and her downfall.
She was right, Morgan. Jill is my responsibility. I’ll look after Molly Bray’s daughter as if she were my own.
Morgan tried sporadically through the day to locate Miranda, pacing his initiatives to keep his rising apprehension in check. When she didn’t turn up at Robert Griffin’s house before Nishimura and Ikuko left, he went inside and used the telephone. His cell phone was back in his kitchen where it usually was when it wasn’t with his pager in his desk at headquarters. He called her cell phone, he called her at headquarters. He called her at home and listened to her voice mail greeting.
When Nishimura came to the door, Morgan looked up from where he was comfortably ensconced in the wingback chair and explained he would wait for Miranda here. She had said nothing to suggest she would come to Griffin’s, but he didn’t know where else to look.
He dozed awkwardly in the chair, wanting, when she walked in, to seem as if he had