Mr. Clarinet

"In a way I'm not," she said. "Her last days were really bad for her. She was in a lot of pain. No one should have to go through that kind of suffering. I really hope she's gone to a better place. All her life she believed in the one after this."

Max didn't have anything to say to that, anything that would sound sincere and comforting in its conviction. He'd gone through the same thing right after Sandra had died. Her death had felt final, a sudden, complete stop and nothing coming after. Life had felt utterly worthless to him.

"What are you going to do?" he asked her.

"I'll see. For now, Allain wants me to stay on and help him out. He's in charge of everything at the moment. I don't think he can cope. It hit him real hard."

"Yeah, I know. I appreciate you driving me here. You didn't have to."

"I couldn't let you leave without saying good-bye."

"It doesn't have to be 'good-bye,'" Max said. "It could be 'see you later' or 'see you soon.' Why don't you give me a call when you get back to Miami—" He started writing down his number, got past the area code, and then realized he'd forgotten it. "I'll have to call you."

She looked at him, met his eye, and let him stare right at her sadness, a pain so deep she'd lost sight of it, so intense it was on the verge of overwhelming her. He felt clumsy and stupid. Wrong move at the wrong time in the wrong place.

"I'm sorry."

She shook her head, whether in forgiveness or disbelief, he couldn't tell.

They pulled up opposite the airport.

Chantale took his arm.

"Max, don't call me. You're not ready. Not for me, not for anyone," she said, doing her best to smile with her quivering lips. "You know what you need to do when you get home? You need to bury your wife. Mourn her, cry, let it out, wash her ghost right out of your heart. Then you can move on."

Part 5

Chapter 59

BACK IN MIAMI, back at the Kendall Radisson Hotel. They hadn't given him the same room that he had before, but they might as well have, because it was identical to the last one—two single beds with brown-and-yellow tartan bedspreads, a bedside table with a Gideon's Bible inside, a writing desk and chair with a hazy mirror that needed a more vigorous polish, a medium-sized TV, and an armchair and table by the window. The view wasn't any different either—Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, an ice cream parlor, a carpet warehouse, and a cheap Chinese eatery; beyond that, some of Kendall's quiet houses, set away from the road, drowned in trees and shrubbery. The weather was good, the sky a deep, liquid blue, the sun nowhere near as intense as he had become used to in Haiti.

When he'd got out of the airport, he hadn't even bothered trying to take the route home, just told the cabdriver to bring him straight here. He'd made the decision on the plane, right after takeoff, when the wheels had left the runway and his guts had dropped through his seat. He didn't want to spend Christmas or see 1997 in at his house, the memorial to his past life, his past happiness. He'd return there on January 2, when he was set to check out.

* * *

It wasn't over.

He couldn't get Charlie Carver out of his head.

Where was the kid?

What had happened to him?

He'd never left unfinished business for this very reason—it kept him up nights, it haunted him, it wouldn't let him be.

He hit Little Haiti. The shops, the bars, the market, the clubs. He was the only white face there. No one bothered him, plenty of people spoke to him. He often thought he recognized faces he'd seen in Port-au-Prince and Pétionville, but they were no one he'd met.

He ate dinner every night at a Haitian restaurant called Tap-Tap. The food was great, the service temperamental, the atmosphere warm and raucous. He sat at the same table—facing a noticeboard with a missing-persons poster of Charlie stuck in the middle.

* * *

He chewed over the case in his head. He went through it chronologically. He laid out the evidence. He added it up. Then he worked in other detail—background, history, people.

Something wasn't right.

There was something he hadn't seen, or something he'd overlooked, or something he wasn't meant to see.

But what, he didn't know.

It wasn't over.

He had to know what had happened to Charlie Carver.

Chapter 60

DECEMBER 21: JOE called him just after eight a.m., to tell him they'd rescued Claudette Thodore and arrested Saxby. Saxby had started spilling his guts the minute they'd slapped the cuffs on him, trying to cut a deal with everyone from the arresting officer to the paramedic, promising to tell them about a private club in Miami and bodies dumped in the Everglades, in return for a reduced sentence.

Father Thodore was on his way to Fort Lauderdale to see his niece.