Blood Memory
‘Iles’s way of telling the story lifts him clear of the pack into a different league’ (Observer) in this masterful psychological serial killer thriller from the New York Times No.1 bestseller.Some memories live deep in the soul, waiting to be resurrected…He kills like an animal, but the bite marks on his victims are unmistakably human… In the suffocating heat of a New Orleans summer, forensic expert Cat Ferry is called on by the FBI to investigate a series of brutal murders. Cat has seen some terrible crimes over the years, though none so horrific or apparently random as these.Called on by the FBI to investigate serial murders, Cat has seen some terrible crimes over the years, but none as horrific or apparently random as the sequence of brutal slayings that confront her now.Plagued by nightmares and panic attacks, Cat returns to her Mississippi hometown. But something associated with this case is calling out to her. Something rooted in the dark recesses of her memory. Someone from the past, who wants Cat to remember what time has allowed her to forget…
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GREG ILES
Blood Memory
This novel is dedicated to all those women who realize in the dead of night that something is wrong, and has been for a long time. More than most, they know that Faulkner’s words are true: ‘There is no such thing as was – only is. If was existed, there would be no grief or sorrow.’ You are not alone.
Memory is the guardian of all things.
—Cicero
Evil being the root of mystery,
pain is the root of knowledge.
—Erasmus
Table of Contents
When does murder begin?
With the pull of a trigger? With the formation of a motive? Or does it begin long before, when a child swallows more pain than love and is forever changed?
Perhaps it doesn’t matter.
Or perhaps it matters more than everything else.
We judge and punish based on facts, but facts are not truth. Facts are like a buried skeleton uncovered long after death. Truth is fluid. Truth is alive. To know the truth requires understanding, the most difficult human art. It requires seeing all things at once, forward and backward, the way God sees.
Forward and backward …
So we begin in the middle, with a telephone ringing in a dark bedroom on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans, Louisiana. There’s a woman lying on the bed, mouth open in the mindless gape of sleep. She seems not to hear the phone. Then suddenly the harsh ring breaks through, like defibrillator paddles shocking a comatose patient. The woman’s hand shoots from beneath the covers, groping for the phone, not finding it. She gasps and rises onto one elbow. Then she groans and picks up the receiver from the bedside table.
The woman is me.
“Dr. Ferry,” I croak.
“Are you sleeping?” The voice is male, taut with anger.
“No.” My denial is automatic, but my mouth is dry as a cotton ball, and my alarm clock reads 8:20 P.M. I’ve been out for nine hours. The first decent sleep I’ve had in days.
“He hit another one.”
Something sparks in my drowsy brain. “What?”
“This is the fourth time I’ve called in the past half hour, Cat.”
The voice brings up a well of anger, longing, and guilt. It belongs to the detective I’ve been sleeping with for the past eighteen months. Sean Regan. An insightful, fascinating man with a wife and three kids.
“What did you say before?” I ask, ready to bite off Sean’s head if he asks me to meet him somewhere.
“I said, he hit another one.”
I blink and try to orient myself in the darkness. It’s early August, and the purple glow of dusk filters through my curtains. God, my mouth is dry. “Where?”
“The Garden District. Owner of a printing company. Male Caucasian.”
“Bite marks?”
“Worse than the others.”
“How old was he?”
“Sixty-nine.”
“Jesus. It is him.” I’m already getting out of bed. “This makes no sense at all.”
“Nope.”
“Sexual predators kill women, Sean. Or children. Not old men.”
“We’ve had this conversation. How fast can you get here? Piazza’s hovering over me, and the chief himself may be coming down for a look.”
I lift yesterday’s jeans off the chair and slip them over my panties. Victoria’s Secret, Sean’s favorite pair, but he won’t be seeing them tonight. Maybe not for a long time. Maybe never again. “Any gay angle on this victim? Did he use male prostitutes, anything like that?”
“Not even a tickle,” Sean replies. “Looks as clean as the others.”
“If he’s got a home computer, confiscate it. He might—”
“I know my job, Cat.”
“I know, but—”
“Cat.” The single syllable is a probing finger. “Are you sober?”
A column of heat rises up my spine. I haven’t had a sip of vodka for nearly forty-eight hours, but I’m not going to give Sean the satisfaction of answering his interrogation. “What’s the victim’s name?”
“Arthur LeGendre.” His voice drops. “Are you sober, darlin’?”
The craving is already awake in my blood, like little teeth gnawing at the walls of my veins. I need the anesthetic burn of a shot of Grey Goose. Only I can’t have that anymore. I’ve been using Valium to fight the physical withdrawal symptoms, but nothing can truly replace the alcohol that has kept me together for so long.
