Delusion Read Free

computer-style lettering: 12:41 AM July 23 . And then the year, twenty years before. All these numbers swam around in his mind, then clicked together in a way that made his steady, plodding heartbeat speed up a little. He was looking at a photograph from the night of Johnny Blanton’s murder. Pirate turned slowly to Susannah.
    “It’s a still taken from a security video camera over the front door 8
    PETER ABRAHAMS
    at Nappy’s Fine Liquors,” she said. “The store was closed at that hour, of course, but you wanted in. You even showed proof of age.”
    “I . . . I don’t remember.”
    “The way we figure it, you woke up in the night, perhaps not very sober, went out for more to drink, came back home, blacked out.”
    “I just don’t . . .”
    “That’s the beauty part,” Susannah said. “It doesn’t matter whether you remember or not. According to the trial testimony, Johnny Blanton was murdered between twelve-thirty and twelve forty-five. It might even have happened at that exact same minute, twelve forty-one.”
    Pirate stared at her. He got that squinting feeling in his non-eye, stronger than ever before, strong enough to hurt. For a moment, he thought he was actually seeing out of it, out of an empty socket. The beautiful skin on her face dissolved and the bones underneath appeared, clear as day, very fine. Yes, he was seeing out of his former eye.
    “As you may recall,” Susannah said, “the murder took place at the Parish Street Pier on the Sunshine Road bayou, not far from Magnolia Glade. That’s six point three miles from Nappy’s—or rather, from where Nappy’s used to be. I measured it myself, Mr. DuPree. Do you see what this means? No one can be in two places at the same time.
    You didn’t do it, end of story.”
    Tell me something I don’t know. Pirate kept that thought to himself.
    “Time’s up,” said the guard.
    C H A P T E R 2
    Light slanted down through the gently heaving water in sunny columns, one of which illuminated a little fish swimming near the base of the reef, purple and gold, like a jewel on the move.
    Nell breathed deeply through her snorkel, filling her lungs, and dove straight down with slow, powerful kicks, her upper body still. Near the bottom, she stopped kicking and glided the rest of the way, hovering over the fish. A fairy basslet, or possibly a beaugregory, but Nell had never seen either one with gold so bright, purple so intense. It looked up at her, tiny eyes—most colorless of all its parts—watching her, void of any expression she could define. The fish was hovering, too, its front fins vibrating at hummingbird-wing speed, filagreed fins so close to transparent they were almost invisible. And—this was amazing—the two front fins didn’t match: one was purple, the other gold. Nell, transfixed, lost all track of time until she felt pressure starting to build in her chest. She checked the depth gauge on her wrist: fifty-five feet. Nell was a good breath holder. She turned back for a last look at this special fish, perhaps one of a kind. It was gone.
    She kicked her way back up.
    Nell broke the surface, blew through her snorkel, sucked in the rich air. Bahamian air: it had its own smell, floral and salty, her favorite smell on earth, and this was her favorite place. She turned toward Little Parrot Cay, a coral islet about fifty yards away: from this angle, tropical paradise pared down to the simplest components—white 10
    PETER ABRAHAMS
    sand beach, a few palm trees, thatched hut—all colors bright, as in a child’s version. In fact, hadn’t Norah, her daughter, now in college, once come home from school with just such a painting? Nell was trying to remember the details when something down below grabbed her leg.
    She jerked away, a frightened cry rising up her snorkel, a cry she smothered when her husband burst up through the surface, a big smile on his face.
    “Clay,” she said, pushing her mouthpiece aside, “you scared me.”
    He put his arms