“What do you mean?” she asked numbly.
“I’m gonna take care of you. I promise.”
“Patrick,” she said, but the car skidded on the curve, and he muttered angrily. A light snow had begun to fall. It coated the windshield.
“. . . get the hell out, that’s what we’re gonna do,” he was muttering as he peered over the wheel.
“Maybe he’s all right. It probably looks worse than it is,” she said and tried to close her eyes against the dreadful vision of Chester’s dangling head.
“He’s dead!” He glanced at her with a laugh of disbelief. “He’s fucking dead! Oh Jesus Christ,” he groaned, punching the side of his head. “What happened? What the hell happened? What, what, what, what, what goes on in this fucking head of mine?”
“He jumped you. We’ll tell them what happened. I’ll help you explain it,” she said. “He shouldn’t have jumped you. He had a knife and you were startled. You got scared. It was like some kind of flashback, like Vietnam. Like everything that happened there, only all over again. It’s not like you went in intending to hurt anyone. I mean, you were a hero. Everyone knows that.”
He looked at her and laughed. The exit was ahead. He pulled abruptly into the right lane.
“Patrick, I’m not going with you. I don’t want to! Let me out, please?”
“No, you’re just scared, but it’s going to be all right! I promise! I love you, Fiona,” he said with a smile so wide and wet she could feel it in her stomach.
“But I don’t. I don’t love you, Patrick. I’m sorry, I don’t.”
He swerved into the breakdown lane, then stopped with the motor running. He held on to her arm.
“You know I don’t,” she said. “Not that way, not the way you want. That’s sick! Don’t you understand? I feel sick to my stomach every time you say that.” The car rocked as traffic whizzed by, sleeting the windows with dirty slush.
“Why? Why can’t you love me?”
“You know why. Because of our relationship.”
“We don’t have a fucking relationship!” He pounded the wheel. “Do you understand? Do you? Do you?” he demanded, his voice so wracked with frustration and rage she was afraid to answer. To agree or argue right now could be catastrophic. And yet she sensed that her fear gave him solace and strength, that in spite of his own panic it fueled his resolve. He put his hand on the back of her neck, and she stared back at him. “If I tell you who your father is then there’ll be nothing in the way. Then you can love me the way I love you.” He pulled her face close, his breath hot on her eyes.
“Don’t,” she gasped, struggling to turn her head as he moved even closer. “Please don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t tell you? Why? Because you already know? You do, don’t you? You know it’s him.” Eyes glittering, he regarded her terror with a chilling, gleeful intensity. “Your uncle Charles,” he said, pressing against her, his beery breath sour on her mouth.
“No!” she cried, recoiling as her brain exploded with odd images and inexplicable phrases. “That’s ridiculous,” she was saying as he closed his eyes and kissed her. He clutched her hand against his chest. The front of his shirt was wet and sticky. The smell, dark and metallic, as familiar as foreign: blood, Chester’s blood. Her stomach heaved and she pushed him, gagging. He reached out and she hit his arm. Muttering, he threw the car into gear and squealed into traffic, heedless of the honking horns.
“He can tell you himself. That’s what we’ll do then,” he panted as if warning her. “I’ll let him tell you.”
The car rattled loudly as he drove over the metal-gridded bridge into Collerton. He turned onto Essex Street. She was shocked and relieved when she realized his destination was the courthouse. An outburst there would be mortifying, but at least she’d be safe. Chester’s body had surely been discovered by now. The police were probably already at the courthouse waiting for Patrick. As he turned into the parking lot, she expected to see a line of cruisers, but there were only cars, all white with the gently falling snow. The security guard opened the door of his square hut and peered out. Recognizing Patrick, he smiled and waved them through before ducking back inside. Of course, she thought, no one knew what he had done, that he had struck with such savagery as to have nearly severed Chester’s head, that the smudge on his cheek, like the stain on his shirt, was not mud or oil but blood. No one knew, no one but her.
Gripping her arm, Patrick slid over the seat after her, then steered her across the lot. Theirs were the only footprints through the fast-falling snow. She wasn’t wearing a jacket over her uniform. She was shivering, but instead of cold she only felt numb. She was acutely aware of everything around her, even the most random detail, though it was all happening beyond her realm. She was her own witness. Her senses were sapping her will. Because fear’s bouquet is as sharp as it is deadening, she could see, smell, hear, feel, even taste more keenly than ever before. But she was powerless.
“Here!” He nudged her down the slippery well of subground stairs that led to a wide metal door at the rear of the old brick building. He tried to turn the knob, but it was locked.
“Patrick, what’s the point? Why don’t we . . .”
“What’s the point?” he muttered, fumbling a ring of keys from his pocket. “I’m going to show you the fucking point.” He inserted one in the lock. The door creaked open into a musty dimness. Praying for someone to emerge from the shadows, she held her breath as he pushed her through the narrow, low-ceilinged basement. Surely they’d see her terror, his wild gleaming eyes. They passed the clanging furnace room, then storage rooms piled high with bulging tan and gray cardboard file boxes.
“Hey, Patrick,” a redheaded man in dark blue pants and shirt called from his work cubicle. He was clamping a glued leg back onto a battered oak chair. “You’re back!”
“Yah, you goddamn creep,” Patrick muttered under his breath, pushing her along.
“Wait!” she tried to call back, struggling to turn. “Please . . .”
“No! No!” Patrick grunted, butting his body into hers to move her around the corner. “Don’t! Don’t!” he warned, leaning so hard against her that her spine dug into the cinder-block wall. “Don’t make me do that. Don’t make me hurt anyone. I’ve got a gun, and I swear I’ll use it,” he said, reaching behind to his waistband. “I will. You do know that, right?”
She nodded.
“So be quiet. That’s all, just be quiet now, real, real quiet,” he whispered as they climbed the rear stairs, their footsteps up the metal treads tolling the dull, hollow clung, clung, clung of a cracked bell.
At the first landing she turned toward the stairs to her uncle’s office on the next floor.
“Keep going,” he grunted, opening the door, then guiding her down the long, noisy corridor. People huddled in clumps of two and three, most too preoccupied to glance her way. Look at me! her brain screamed. Can’t you see what’s happening here? Desperate to catch someone’s eye, she stared at each face, then realized how futile it was. His shirt was dark enough to camouflage the blood, and a shivering bare-armed waitress merited little notice by people whose own calamities were so near at hand.
“The next one,” he said. All along the way small numbered signs jutted like metal flags above each frosted-glass door. They stopped at Courtroom 114. She recognized the clear, strong voice that rose and fell behind the closed door.
“No!” She balked, pulling back. “They’re in session.”
“He’ll call a recess.”
“No!”
“Go on in.” He reached past her to open the door.
It was one of the larger courtrooms. Most of the seats were taken. The bailiff glanced over his shoulder as they entered, then gave Patrick a quick nod. They paused in back. A muscular young man in a tweed sports coat and sharply creased chinos stood before Judge Hollis with head bowed and hands folded. He looked to be in his late teens. The balding, portly lawyer at his side was Will Canty, an old friend of her uncle’
s. Everyone in the first row appeared to be members of the young man’s family. Well-dressed and neatly groomed, they gave the Judge their somber and most respectful attention, glancing sadly now and again at their censured relative to nod or frown with one or another of the Judge’s admonishments.
If her uncle had seen her enter with Patrick, he gave no indication of it. Black-robed and tall on his elevated bench, he was a striking presence with his pure white hair and robust coloring.
He couldn’t possibly be her father. It was beyond the ken that he would ever allow anything in his life to spin so much out of control and come to this. No. Not him. Not that kind and decent man who had always forgiven her, no matter her sins. But he wouldn’t now. Not this time. This time she had overstepped the last bounds, and now the monster she had created would devour them all. She listened intently as if her uncle’s earnest eloquence might somehow pry loose this frenzied grip from her arm.
The young man had been charged with breaking and entering in the nighttime and vandalism. There was a smashed sign on a gas station roof, broken skylights, and lubricating grease poured over a computer keyboard. Her uncle asked the young man what made him think he could take or ruin what belonged to someone else.
“I don’t know, Your Honor,” the young man said. “I guess I just had too much to drink.”
“Is that your excuse?”
“No, sir.”
“I would hope not, Jared, because there is no excuse or entitlement that allows such actions. This is a society of laws, a society where order must prevail,” her uncle said sternly, though she could tell he felt badly for this young man and his shamed family. If she closed her eyes he might be speaking to her.
The bailiff turned then and whispered that they had to sit down if they wanted to stay.
“We need to see the Judge,” Patrick said in a low, edgy voice.
“He’ll be done pretty soon,” the bailiff said.
Fiona stared back with widened, pleading eyes.
“No. No, I gotta see him now. Right now,” Patrick said.
Uncle Charles leaned over the bench with clasped hands, all zeal and concern focused on this errant youth. “Life will be a lot simpler for you, Jared, once you accept the hard, but, in the end, quite easy fact that there is right and there is wrong. I know it’s fashionable nowadays to call everything that’s off balance and in between the gray area. But it’s not gray, it’s just moral blindness.” Her uncle slipped on his glasses, then looked up with a start. His mouth gaped. Fiona could only stare back, unblinkingly culpable and desperate.
“Come on now, Patrick,” the bailiff quietly urged. He started to put his hand on Patrick’s arm.
“No!” Patrick said. Heads turned. The bailiff paused, glancing between Uncle Charles and Patrick.
“Excuse me,” Uncle Charles said to the young man, then looked to the back of the courtroom. “Why don’t you go up to my chambers, Patrick? I’ll be there shortly.” He closed a file, then leaned forward to speak to the young man.
“We don’t have time!” Patrick called. “She needs to see you. Now! Right now!”
Her uncle stood. The officer in the front of the courtroom had been walking slowly toward them. When he was a few feet away, the bailiff went to touch Patrick’s arm again.
“Don’t!” Patrick snarled.
“Patrick, please!” Fiona said.
“Get out of my fucking way!” Patrick bellowed.
“Oh my God,” a woman gasped, and people cringed in their seats.
“That’s all right,” her uncle said, hurrying down the three steps from the bench. “Everything’s all right. Nothing to worry about. We’ll just need some time here. There’s been a misunderstanding, that’s all.” His voice was low and reassuring as he moved closer. “So we’ll be adjourning this session for the rest of the day, Tom,” he told the shocked court officer. “It’s a misunderstanding, that’s all.”
“Are you sure, Your Honor?” the court officer said.
Her uncle pushed open the door. “We can go up to my—”
“You come with us,” Patrick ordered him. The astonished bailiff asked if this was all right, and the Judge assured him it was. He’d be right back.
Moving quickly along the busy corridor, Fiona kept pace between the two men. Her arm was wet under Patrick’s hold. Sweat ran down his temples.
Still in his judicial robe, her uncle walked with the file under his arm. “Good morning . . . Hello, Jim . . . Attorney Danisch . . . Good morning,” he quietly answered his colleagues’ amazed stares at this outrageous breach of judicial decorum, especially by one so demanding of it.
They hurried down the rear stairs, then along the same dim passage to the back door. Any minute now she expected voices to bear down, ordering them to stop, but they were already opening the heavy metal door and climbing the snowy steps to the parking lot.
“Are you all right?” her uncle asked, his hand at her elbow.
She nodded and looked away, ashamed. The snow fell faster now, the flakes bigger and wetter as they hit her face. Patrick ordered her uncle behind the wheel, then pushed her into the backseat with him.
“Start the car!” Patrick said.
“Now, Patrick.” Her uncle sighed, putting a black-robed arm over the seat and looking back. “We can talk here as well as anywhere else. There’s no sense in driving when the roads are—”
“Start the car. I said, start it! Come on! Start it!” Patrick demanded.
“The roads are going to be very slippery, Patrick,” her uncle said in his most reasonable tone.
“Fuck the roads! If you don’t get us out of here I’ll blow your fucking head off!”
“What? You mean you have a gun?” her uncle said, starting the car. He glanced in disbelief through the rearview mirror. She nodded.
“Yah, I do,” Patrick said, as the bald wheels rolled crunching over the snow, past the white-shrouded security shack. Inside, the guard hunched over a newspaper.
“Where on earth did you get it, Patrick? Do you have a license?” Uncle Charles asked, as he turned the corner slowly onto Essex Street.
“Jesus Christ! Are you serious?” Patrick said with a squeal of laughter that razored up Fiona’s spine. “That’s good, Judge. That’s really, really good!”
“You don’t need a gun to talk to me, you know that,” her uncle said.
“Yah, well it’s not me that wants to talk, Charlie.” He nudged her leg with his. “Go ahead, ask him. Ask him!”
Eyes downcast, Fiona shook her head. She was numb, nothing but dead weight in this raging current. He nudged her again, insisting she ask. “No,” she whispered.
“Patrick, look, why don’t—,” her uncle began.
“Shut up! You just shut the fuck up!” Patrick shouted, pointing at him.
Her uncle’s mouth opened and closed. His face was blood-red. He looked only at Patrick. She was mortified, not for herself but for this man who in kindness had raised her, receiving little in return but trouble and shame.
“It’s me you’re mad at, Patrick, so why—,” her uncle started to say.
“No!” Patrick roared. “I’m not mad. I just hate your fucking guts, that’s all!” He sat back, smiling as he took her hand and squeezed it.
“All right then, it’s me you want to hurt, so look,” Uncle Charles said, putting on the directional. “Why don’t I just stop and we’ll let Fiona get out, then you and I can work things out.”
She kept trying to catch his eye in the mirror to shake her head no. He had no idea what had just happened to Chester. She wouldn’t leave him alone with this madman.
“No, you fucking phony asshole, you!” Patrick roared, laughing. “I want her to hear it from you. That’s why she’s here. So you can tell her.”
“I don’t think Fiona feels very well, Patrick. I think she needs some rest. Why don’t we drop her off? That way you and I can talk, and then we’ll get her later.”
Patrick doubled forward and stamped his feet
with feigned hilarity. “She’ll get all the rest she needs—after,” he said, springing forward. He jammed his fist into the back of her uncle’s neck. “After you tell her the truth. Turn there! Get up on Four ninety-five.” He pointed to the exit sign ahead. Peering, her uncle leaned over the wheel. Only one wiper worked. Even at full speed it couldn’t keep the windshield clear. The car shimmied as they turned onto the exit ramp, and she prayed for a breakdown.
After only a few miles they got off the highway. They seemed to be heading toward the outlying section of Dearborn where Patrick lived. But now, after a series of quick turns ordered by Patrick, they were entering the Dearborn Industrial Park.
“In there!” Patrick said when they came to the Millstone Corporation sign. It was a large tan building of glass and stone. Patrick directed Uncle Charles through the half-filled parking lot, then around the back of the plant, past loading docks, now down a narrow paved road that provided access to two large blue Dumpsters. The road seemed to end at the woods where a reflector-studded chain was stretched between two concrete posts. Here the snow lay undisturbed and un-sanded. The tires whirred and the car began to slide. “Slow down,” Patrick yelled, and Uncle Charles hit the brake hard. The car spun in a half circle. Fiona watched her uncle in the mirror as Patrick shouted for him to straighten it out. He had deliberately gone too fast. He had tried to get the car stuck in the deep gully along the side of the road. Now she saw fear in his darting eyes, as if he knew exactly where they were and how this would end. When he looked back she wanted to tell him how sorry she was for this and for all the pain she had caused him, but he was staring at Patrick.
Fiona Range Page 45
