“I knew he died young, but I had no idea it was before his movies came out,” Page said.
“The waste,” Tori said. Something in her voice made Page wonder if she was thinking about her own disease. “All the other great movies he might have made.”
“At the time, his fans were convinced that he hadn’t really died in the car crash,” Harriett went on. “They believed he was disfigured, that he hid from the public so he wouldn’t shock people and ruin his legacy.”
She paused, bracing herself for what she wanted to say.
“Deacon was a troubled farm boy from Oklahoma. His mother ran away with the hired hand. His father was as stern and joyless as the father in The Prodigal Son. As a teenager, he rebelled to the point that he was accused of stealing a car and almost went to reform school. A teacher got him interested in acting in high school plays. He loved it so much that he found several part-time jobs, saved a hundred dollars, and hitchhiked to New York City, where he convinced Lee Strasberg to let him audition and was allowed to take classes at the Actors Studio.
“What people tend to forget is that at the beginning of Deacon’s career, he played bit parts in a couple of movies, but he never made an impression. He had secondary roles in a lot of live television plays, and no one paid attention to those, either-deservedly. Even though he studied with Strasberg, he was terrible. Awkward, dull, lifeless. If he hadn’t been so good-looking, he probably would never have been hired.
“Finally he became so discouraged that he gave up and drove his motorcycle across the country. That was in the summer of ’56. By the fall, he was back in New York, where he managed to persuade a casting director to give him a small part in a Broadway play. Suddenly he was acting so brilliantly that a Hollywood talent scout gave him a screen test for a small part in The Prodigal Son. The test was so spectacular that the director asked for a second one and then gave Deacon the starring role. According to the DVD of the movie, that’s one of the great success stories in Hollywood history. What do you sup- pose made the difference?”
Page shrugged. “I guess the motorcycle trip gave him a chance to get focused.”
“Or maybe he had help,” Harriett said.
“Help?”
“That summer, Deacon was on his way from El Paso to Big Bend National Park. That’s southeast of here. He happened to drive into Rostov.”
Tori stepped forward. “He saw the lights?”
“He spent most of August and all of September here. Every night, he drove out to the observation area, which wasn’t even a parking lot back then. And every night, he stayed until dawn. Then he drove back into town and slept in a tent he’d put up in the park. Late afternoons, he went around town and made friends. He was so good-looking, I don’t imagine that was difficult. Then one day he was gone, returning to New York and his big break.”
Page frowned. “You’re saying the lights had something to do with it?”
“They were the only thing that was different in his life,” Harriett replied. “I can imagine him staring at the lights for all those weeks. Night after night. Spellbound. In Deacon’s earlier roles, his eyes are dull. In his last three films, they glow. When he was hired to be one of the stars in Birthright, he told the film’s director about Rostov and how the area around here would be perfect for location shooting. He was so persuasive that the director came out to take a look and instantly decided to build the ranch house-right here.” She gestured at the ruined structure. “Seems awfully coincidental that we’re ten miles from the section of road where Deacon first saw the lights.”
“Did the director see the lights, too?” Page asked.
“No. Local people who worked on the movie remember that Deacon went there every night and dragged Pageant, Rivers, and the director with him several times. They had no idea what he was talking about. The crew members didn’t get it, either, and finally Deacon was the only one who went out there.”
Harriett drew a breath.
“He didn’t need makeup to look older,” she finally said.
Despite the heat, Page felt a cold ripple on his skin. “What do you mean?”
“The director shot the movie in sequence. As Deacon was supposed to look older, he actually did look older. The rumor on the set was that he was drinking and taking drugs every night instead of watching the lights, as he claimed. He began to look so wasted that the director begged him to stop abusing himself. There was talk of shutting down the picture and sending Deacon to a hospital to dry out. But every evening, when the town gathered to watch scenes from a few days earlier, Deacon looked so perfectly in character, so real in the part, that the director kept filming. The makeup people needed to use all their talents to get Pageant and Rivers to look as believably older as Deacon did.”
Standing in the shadow of the ranch house’s ruin, Tori asked, “What made that happen?”
“All I can tell you is that when Deacon finished his last scene and drove away on his motorcycle, people say he looked sixty years old,” Harriett answered. “Five days later, he was killed driving his sports car to a race in northern California near where he’d filmed The Prodigal Son. He was going a hundred miles an hour when a pickup truck pulled onto the road. A witness saw sunlight glinting off the truck’s windshield. The theory was that the glint blinded Deacon and kept him from being able to steer around the truck.”
Page stared at the splintered boards lying on the ground. “Why hasn’t any of this been talked about?”
“Deacon’s death really traumatized everyone associated with the movie. They didn’t claim to understand him, but they respected his brilliance, and they didn’t want to tarnish his legacy by claiming that he was wasted on booze and drugs. They certainly weren’t going to make him sound like a nutcase by mentioning the lights, which no- body believed in anyhow.”
Harriett lapsed into silence. In the hot sun, the only sounds were cattle lowing in the distance and a breeze scraping blades of scrub grass.
“So the lights inspired Deacon, and then he became so obsessed by them that he was destroyed?” Tori asked.
“It depends on what you mean by destroyed. That final performance bordered on greatness,” Harriett answered.
“But the bottom line is, he died,” Tori emphasized.
“It could be that’s what Deacon wanted. Maybe he’d lived so in- tensely during the previous year that he couldn’t bear it any longer.”
“You’re suggesting…?”
“The glint on the windshield of the truck he hit. Maybe he was so burned out that he decided to drive into the light.”
The breeze faded, everything becoming still.
“Yesterday you told us how blessed the people in town feel because they’ve seen the lights,” Page said.
“That was my experience.”
“But not everybody’s experience,” Page added. “Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? In town, I heard a store clerk say that when she was young, she used to go out to see the lights, but now she never does. Yesterday you said you stopped going out to see them, also.”
Harriett looked pointedly at Tori. “When Chief Costigan phoned yesterday to say you were coming to see me, he explained how fixated you are on the lights. I brought you here to try to make you under- stand that, yes, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.”
47
The crackle of static woke him.
As did his headache.
And the odor.
Halloway lifted the side of his face from a table. His cheek was numb from having been pressed so long against the wood. The ear- phones remained on his head. He felt groggy, as if he’d drunk every one of the numerous glasses of vodka and orange juice that the alluring music had made him imagine.
The scent of cinnamon remained in his nostrils. He sensed the lingering warmth of the voluptuous woman with whom he had slow danced in his fantasy.
And danced, and danced…
Until he’d passed out.
Halloway was slumped acro
ss a desk. When he straightened, he felt wetness in the front of his pants. He raised his head toward the painfully bright overhead lights and took off the staticky earphones. Exposed to air after so long a time, his ears tingled. He’d hoped that- without the aggravating crackle-his headache would lessen, but in fact the pain burrowed deeper into his skull because the crackle no longer kept him from hearing the hum that radiated from every surface of the underground facility.
If I can only find what’s causing it.
But Halloway ‘s headache wasn’t the only thing that had intensified. The odor now almost made him gag.
He peered down at the bodies. So many bodies. The scientists. The other guards. Their blood covered the floor, the stench reminding him of a butcher’s shop through which he and his Ranger unit had searched for insurgents in Iraq. The electricity to that part of Fallujah had failed, and the meat had been spoiling in the extreme heat.
Here in the observatory, the blood wasn’t the worst of it. Foul- smelling body fluids had leaked from several of the corpses. The faces of some had begun to distend.
That shouldn’t be happening so soon, Halloway thought. He glanced at his watch and saw that the hands showed seven minutes to 4. His outburst had occurred around 9:30. His muddled thoughts somehow did the math. Less than seven hours.
At once a suspicion made him stand. Uneasy, he stepped over the bodies, doing his best to avoid the blood. He entered the corridor and found another dead guard, this one with features so mutilated by bullets that his face wasn’t recognizable.
Halloway turned right and walked along the corridor, the loud echo of his bootsteps failing to shut out the hum. He entered the surveillance room, his mouth dropping open when he saw the images on the monitors. None had the green tint of a night-vision camera. The radio dishes, the three rows of fences, the miles and miles of scrub grass, the distant mountains-all were bathed in the hot glare of sunshine.
Not seven hours, he thought in shock. Nineteen.
Dear God, I’ve never slept that long in my life.
The phone rang. It was one of only four in the facility, all of which were scrambler-equipped. He stared at it and, on the second ring, picked it up.
“Station Zulu,” he said.
“This is Alpha Control,” a man’s voice said impatiently. “Identify yourself.”
“Earl Halloway. I’m one of the guards.”
“Halloway,” the voice responded. “Former Ranger sergeant. Saw combat in Iraq.”
Halloway recognized the steely, authoritative tone. It belonged to the man who led the team that had arrived via chopper yesterday afternoon. Colonel Raleigh. “Yes, sir.”
“Well,former Sergeant Halloway-” Raleigh’s voice exuded venom. “-I’ve been trying to contact your station for the past six hours. Why in Christ’s name isn’t anybody answering the phone?”
The heat of adrenaline cleared Halloway’s groggy thoughts. “Sir, there was a thunderstorm last night.” He had a vague memory of hearing the periodic rumbles as he drank vodka and orange juice, smelled cinnamon, and danced.
“I know all about the damned storm. I’m only twenty miles away from you. We were caught in it, too.”
“Well, sir, we got struck by lightning.” He was thinking faster now. “It interfered with our communications capabilities.”
“You’re telling me that some of the best scientists working for the government don’t have the combined skills needed to repair the dam- age from an electrical storm? That facility is grounded all the way to hell. I find it hard to believe that a lightning strike would have any effect whatsoever.”
“Sir, with all due respect, I’m not a communications specialist. I’m just repeating what the technicians told me. They took until now to repair the damage.”
“And meanwhile, no data was received or transmitted to Fort Meade?” The colonel’s voice sounded even more infuriated.
“I’m told that’s correct, sir.”
“Damn it, when this is over, I’m going to find out who didn’t do his job. Right now, I want you to transfer this call to the control room.”
Halloway felt a moment’s panic. “Sir, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
“Can’t? What are you talking about?”
“The phone I’m using, the one in the surveillance room, is the only one that’s been put back into service.”
The line became silent. Halloway imagined that he could feel the colonel’s growing fury. He was glad to have a safe distance between them.
“Former Sergeant Halloway, I want you to go to the control room and bring Gordon to the phone.”
“Sir? Are you there, sir? I can’t hear you.”
“What do you mean you can’t hear me?”
“Sir?”
“Damn it, I can hear you perfectly fine,” Raleigh replied, his voice getting louder.
“Sir? If you’re still on the line, you’re not coming through. The sys- tem must be failing again.”
“Bring Gordon to the phone, Sergeant!”
“Sir? Sir?”
Halloway set the phone back on its cradle, breaking the connection.
He looked down at the floor and concentrated. Then he returned to the corridor and made his way back to the control room. Although he was combat-hardened from two tours of duty in the most violent parts of Iraq, the stench made him gag.
Gotta clean this place up, he thought. Can’t appreciate the music if I’m sick to my stomach.
A further thought added to his resolve.
And I can’t defend this place if I’m sick, either.
When he checked his watch, he saw with a chill that the time was now almost 5 o’clock. Somehow fifty minutes had sped by. It was as if he’d blacked out again. Time wasn’t acting the way it should.
Move, he told himself.
Halloway stooped toward Gordon’s corpse, grabbed its two stiff hands, and dragged the body across the floor. Out in the corridor, he kept moving backward past the surveillance room, toward the stairs. He tried tugging Gordon up them, but the dead man’s belt caught on the edge of a metal step. A few steps later, it was Gordon’s shoes that got snagged.
This is taking too long.
He pulled Gordon’s stiff arms upward until the corpse seemed to be standing a few steps below him. He put an arm around Gordon’s back, then reached behind his knees-which didn’t bend-and lifted him.
The weight made Halloway wince.
How the hell is it possible, he wondered, that a hundred and eighty pounds of dead weight is heavier than a hundred and eighty pounds of live weight? It ought to be the other way around, ’cause something’s missing.
Breathing hard, he carried the body up the stairs. His echoing footfalls were loud from the weight he carried.
At the top, he wavered, almost toppling back. After managing to catch his balance, he leaned Gordon against the metal railing and opened the first security door.
I tried to be friends with you, Gordon, but you wouldn’t let me. All you needed to do was be a buddy and share the music, but no-you wanted it all to yourself. See what happens when you act like a prick?
He pulled Gordon toward the second security door. The movement resembled dancing. Pressing the corpse against the wall, he opened the second door and blinked at the harsh sunlight.
The breeze was sweet after the stench of so much death.
Behind the radio dishes, there’s a stretch of ground nobody ever sees, Halloway thought.
He lowered Gordon and started to drag him in that direction. But then he cursed himself for being stupid.
Use the damned truck.
The flatbed truck was always parked next to the dish that was tilted horizontally. The ignition key was always in the truck. Protected by three fences-one of which was constructed of razor wire, another of which was electrified-the truck was hardly in danger of being stolen.
He ran through the fierce sunlight toward the truck and felt his breathing become more difficult.
The array of obse
rvatory dishes loomed over him, the metal beams that supported them resembling legs. Brilliantly white, each dish was fifty feet tall. They stretched in a line a half mile long, and as Halloway hurried past them, they made him feel dwarfed.
Insignificant.
Threatened…
Sweat soaked his shirt by the time he reached the truck. He scram- bled up into the cab, and sure enough, the ignition key was there. He turned it, but the engine chugged with effort.
The battery’s almost dead!
He released the key and twisted it again. The engine labored more slowly.
Come on! Come on!
Abruptly the engine roared to life. With a muttered cry of victory, he put it in gear and steered the truck in a half circle. Leaving a cloud of exhaust smoke, he lumbered toward the concrete-block shed. He jumped out, lifted Gordon, and felt his heart pound from the effort of dumping the corpse onto the back of the truck.
Now I’ve got a system. The others shouldn’t be this hard. Need to rush. Need to finish before the music starts.
A further consideration made him frown.
Or before the colonel decides to make a surprise inspection.
Halloway checked his watch again and gaped. The time was now almost twenty to 6. Forty minutes had sped by when he’d have sworn that only twenty minutes had passed. He pressed the numbers on the security pad, opened the heavy metal door, and reached for the interior door.
Need to collect the M4s and all the ammunition I can find. Need to get grenades for the launchers. This place is designed to withstand a major assault. If the colonel shows up and tries to break in, he’ll wish to God he’d let me alone.
All I want is to listen to the music.
As he charged down the metal stairs, again gagging from the stench, he realized that he’d need to bury the bodies instead of just dumping them. Otherwise the vultures might swarm toward the corpses and draw attention. He needed to be extra certain that the colonel wouldn’t have any suspicion of what had happened here.
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