Just as she reaches the bottom step and he has taken the key from his pocket, they hear a slow, rhythmic, soft screeching. With no idea what in heaven’s name it is, he rushes back inside, stops at the head of the aisle, and grabs for the back of the nearest pew.
The cross has begun to swing over the altar, its brass chains scraping against the eyehooks that hold them to the beams overhead. Although practically new, they sound centuries rusted, and Lyman can’t help but think of an old ship on the ocean.
From the doorway Kitra says, “Lyman, tell me it’s the wind, all right? Just tell me it’s the wind.”
* * * *
2
Ben Pellier has finally finished wiping down the tables, laying out the half-dozen sets of darts near the board, and with Alma, making sure all the salt and pepper shakers are filled, the sugar packets are on the tables, and the individual silverware settings are all rolled up in their wine-colored cloth napkins. Senior is sweeping the floor, humming quietly to himself.
Opening in three hours, and he’s ready for business, early for a change.
From the kitchen door, Alma says, “See if he’s hungry, dear.”
Ben nods and dusts his hands on his apron as he approaches the bar. As he scratches under his patch, he says, “Hey, you old fart, you ready to eat?”
Pegleg stares at him, then bobs his head several times. “Ready to eat,” the parrot answers. “Ready to eat.”
Alma laughs. “He’s always ready to eat, that one.”
Senior sweeps the last of the dirt out the front door, takes a swipe or two at the steps, and leans the broom against the wall as he pulls a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. There’s a light wind blowing in from the ocean, and his lighter fights him until he finds just the right angle of cupped hand and bent back.
“Those things’ll kill you, man,” Ben calls as the wind slips inside, stirs the fresh sawdust Senior has spread over the bare wood.
“Too old to worry about it,” Senior tells him with a broad grin.
“And that makes the place look bad, you standing out there like that,” Ben adds.
“Why? Because I’m black?”
“No, because you’re old and funny-looking, you’ll scare all the women away.”
They laugh, shake their heads, and Senior returns to his smoke while Ben mimes for him to shut the door, then turns to see that Pegleg is okay. The old bird hates the wind, hates the breeze, will go nuts if anybody blows in his face. A story has gone around that it’s because the bird doesn’t like being reminded of his younger days aboard a ship that sailed the Pacific.
The truth was, Ben bought the stupid bird near fresh from its egg, but the story makes for a better story, and he’s never contradicted it. He has no idea why Peg doesn’t like the wind, and he really doesn’t care. If it bothers his old friend, then it bothers him. “
“Alma,” he calls, “hurry it up, will you?”
Peg stares at him from his cage.
Ben laughs. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, huh? It ain’t my fault she’s slow.”
Peg spreads his wings as if stretching, then pecks once at the cage. He lifts his head as if testing the wind, says, “Ready to eat, Ben. Ready to die.”
* * * *
3
Billy Freck sits at his desk in the sheriff’s office, legs propped on the edge, toothpick hanging out of the corner of his mouth. He’s back near the window so he can see the parking lot behind the building, as well as straight across the room to the entrance. Verna is at her desk, straightening up before she goes home, once in a while answering the radio, giving instructions.
There are strings of red and silver stuff he never knows the name of looped around the walls, cutouts of snowmen and reindeer on the window, and a small Christmas tree at the end of the visitors bench.
As if, he thinks, that’s gonna make anyone cheer up.
Oakman has already left so he doesn’t miss dinner at Betsy’s.
“How’s it look out there, Verna?”
“Quiet.”
“Too early for any excitement, I guess.”
“I guess.”
He takes the toothpick out, examines it, puts it back. “Heard the ex-con’s got some of his gang up there on Midway.”
Verna doesn’t answer. She sweeps her blotter clean with the edge of her hand, adjusts her glasses, takes her purse from the bottom drawer.
“You think they’ll rob the bank or something?”
“Or something.”
“You don’t care, do you?”
“Billy,” she says without turning around, “right now, all I care about is getting out of here and not coming back until first thing in the morning.”
He grunts.
She stands and stretches, keeping her back to him.
“You do your Christmas shopping yet?”
She nods.
“You buy me anything?” he asks around a grin.
She lifts a hand slowly over her shoulder and gives him a languid wave before stepping around her desk, checking it one last time, and pushing through the barrier gate. She points to the radio on her way to the exit. “Keep an ear out, will you, until Salter comes in?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer.
Billy salutes her back. “Yes, ma’am, I surely will. You can count on me. Absolutely, you tight-ass bitch.”
He swings his legs to the floor and saunters over to her desk, drops into her chair and begins to search through the drawers. He’s never found anything there yet, but there’s always a first time. Besides, it makes noise. The office is too quiet, and he doesn’t like the quiet. No one in the cells below, he’s the only living thing left in the building, and the more noise he can make without making a racket, the better he feels.
The radio snaps and hisses quietly, as if it were muttering to itself.
When, not surprisingly, there’s nothing for him to find, he concentrates instead on the meeting he’s got set with Mariana later tonight. Her old lady’s got some damn dinner party or other, so Mariana can’t get out until that’s over. Then he’s going to meet her down at the harbor, and with luck make a few waves of his own.
He’s no fool. He knows she’s only using him when she’s got nothing better going on, but he has no intention of being the one to end it. Whatever “it” is. At least not until he gets his final payment from Cutler. Once that’s tucked away in the bank, he’s going to walk into Oakman’s office, throw the cheesy tin badge into his fat old face, tell him a thing or two or three, and get the hell off this island.
He’s not sure yet where he’s going, but with the money he’s saved over the past couple, three years, there won’t be many places he won’t be able to afford.
He rolls the chair back, has one leg ready to rest on Verna’s desk, when the radio’s speaker light winks on red and he hears someone whispering.
“Shit,” he says, grabs the mike, and thumbs it on. “Salter, damnit, speak up, I can’t understand you.”
He listens.
“Dwight, that you? Whack your mike on the dash, it ain’t coming through so good.”
The whispering grows a little louder, but he still can’t understand it.
“Sheriff, that you? Can’t understand you, Sheriff, this speaker’s gone all to hell.” He raps the top of the speaker with his knuckles. “Sheriff? Salter?” Now he whacks the speaker with his palm, hits it again, and tosses the mike on the desk in disgust. “Goddamn cheap shit.”
He listens a while longer, head tilted to one side, listening hard now because he thinks there’s more than one voice he’s hearing. Maybe not, but he sure knows what it sounds like—all those sons of bitches in high school who used to talk about him behind his back, stuck-up snobs who think you ain’t a whole person if you don’t have a whole family. Whispering about him in the cafeteria, in the halls, talking about his momma, how she run away one night and never came back; talking about his sister, how she’d climb under the sheet with any man or kid who asked her; talking a
bout him because he only had three shirts and two pairs of jeans and all of them were made of old cotton.
Talking about him, how he’ll end up in the gutter, just like the rest of the Frecks, just like the whole damn family.
“Damn,” and he shakes his head, wondering where the hell all that came from. He glances over the radio’s face until he finds the speaker switch and, not caring if Oakman bitches or not, flicks it off.
Maybe what he’ll do is, he’ll call down to Rick, the guy is an asshole, but he’s damn good with things like radios and stuff. Maybe he can come on up, take a look, see what’s wrong. To do that, though, he needs a telephone book, and after failing to find where Verna kept hers, he grunts to his feet and, stretching his arms over his head, looks around the room. He knows there has to be one here somewhere.
When he finds it he laughs. Wouldn’t you know, it’s right out there in the open, on top of Dwight’s desk. He grabs it up, lets the cover fall open, and turns when he hears the radio whispering at him again.
“Christ,” he mutters, and stamps over, kicking aside a chair on the way, reaches down to snap the switch off, and freezes.
It is off.
So is the speaker’s red light.
But the whispers still slide from behind the speaker’s grill, and he knows, he just knows, they’re talking about him.
* * * *
4
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
Rick kneels near the bow of the Lucky Deuce, staring at the water. There’s the usual amount of flotsam there— plastic rings, some kind of food, bits of plants—but he also counts at least a dozen dead fish.
He stands, looks around, then walks to the end of the dock and follows the boardwalk along the water’s edge.
“Damn,” he says with a shake of his head.
He doesn’t bother counting the number of dead fish.
He couldn’t anyway; there are too many.
* * * *
5
Norville Cutler sits on a park bench, arms spread along the back, topcoat open, hat on the seat beside him, watching old man Farelli fuss with the string of Christmas lights that outline the barbershop window. From down the street he can hear the tinny sound of carols carrying on the easy wind. Gold spiraled streamers are strung across Midway Road from the tops of the streetlamps, intertwined with tiny bulbs that will, he admits, look pretty nice once the sun has gone down. The street isn’t crowded, but there are enough pedestrians to make the town look alive. He suspects that the shops down by the harbor are just as busy. It’s times like this when he wishes he had gone into one of those businesses instead of peddling the tourist crap he does. Maybe someday he’d figure out how to sell it to the locals, really add to the pot that’s blossoming in the bank.
He belches then, and laughs at himself. He’s just had lunch at the Tide, wants very much to go home and change into something more comfortable, but Mandy has decided to wrap presents today and has ordered him out of the house for at least another hour. Last year she did the wrapping naked, which meant she didn’t get a whole hell of a lot done, but this year, for some reason, she’s taking the season seriously. He has a bad feeling she expects him to pop the question, which he has no intention of doing. Not this year. Not next. Not ever.
Old man Farelli has gone inside.
Cutler glances at his watch, thinks for a second or two, and decides he’s had enough sitting around, waiting around, even though it’s only been a few minutes.
It’s the deal.
He knows it’s the deal.
Time is almost up, his incalculable fortune just about made, and it’s making him nervous. Anxious. More so when Stump didn’t do the deed the way he was supposed to.
“You didn’t say kill him.”
“I said take care of him, what do you suppose that means?”
“Didn’t think it meant kill him.”
Jesus. Working with idiots like that, it’s amazing he and Jasper have gotten this far. One more place, though. One more place. And Freck already has his marching orders.
Once that’s taken care of, he’s pretty sure it won’t make any difference whether Chisholm is dead or alive. That end of the island will be all his, and his partner will have nothing to complain about.
It would be nice, of course, if he could find out what the man wanted with all that property. Prime land, but as far as he could tell, no sign of development activity, no matter what Hull claims to have dredged up in Atlanta.
He taps the fingers of his left hand thoughtfully against his chest, considering Hull, thinking maybe, just to keep the old man honest, it wouldn’t hurt to have the boys pay him another visit. It wouldn’t be, he thinks with a laugh, as if Chisholm would be able to step in again.
Another check of his watch and he gathers his coat closed with one hand, uses the other to push himself off the bench.
Time to go.
Time to see what kind of damage Mandy has done to his bank account—assuming she lets him open the presents early.
He picks up his hat, sets its carefully in place, and walks the straight path to the sidewalk, where he nearly collides with Dermot Alloway.
“Jesus, Dermot,” he says, “you ever look where you’re going?”
Alloway, his cheeks flushed, his eyes nearly invisible behind a pair of heavy-frame glasses, purses his lips in disapproval. “I could say the same for you, Mr. Cutler.” Then everything about him sags, and he looks to Norville like a weary, hunted rabbit. “I have some news.”
Cutler eases him away toward the curb, smiling and nodding when several people recognize him and greet him by name. “What news?” Still smiling.
“He knows.”
“Who knows?”
“Chisholm. I had a call from a friend on the mainland. Chisholm knows about the medication.”
Cutler waves at old man Farelli just leaving his shop. “And so...”
“And so what if he tries to do something about it? My God, Norville, I could lose my license.”
Cutler buttons his coat, claps the doctor heartily on the shoulder. “Not to worry, Dermot, my friend. Not to worry. Anything comes up, it will be taken care of, you have my word on it. Now you have a great Christmas, you hear? My best to the little woman.”
He walks away, head up, back straight. There are those who studiously ignore him, those whose sideways glances are less than friendly, but he doesn’t care. Chisholm knows. So what? Anything he starts, I can finish. In this case, the man’s size was too obviously deceptive.
A smile no one can see.
He walks by the sheriffs office, thinks it might do him well to have a word with Deputy Freck, and looks through the glass door just in time to see Freck smash the dispatch radio on the floor.
* * * *
6
There is a great stillness in the marsh, despite the steady wind that blows overhead. Ronnie stands in a broad-bottom skiff, poling toward the landing where she’s left her truck. On the seat that spans the middle are her laptop computer, a thick three-ring binder, and a large canvas sack tied snugly at the top.
She checks the trees she passes under, studies the water and the land that pokes out from the reeds and weeds and the knees of cypress that have been stunted by saltwater seepage. She is afraid that once she sends in this last report of the year, her job will be finished. They’ll send someone out to check, they always do when they think she’s blown it, and each time it happens, she’s able to smile and be gracious as they apologize for the intrusion.
Not this time.
This time they’re going to see that she’s right, but after the holidays they’ll send out an army of researchers and biologists and what-all, and they won’t have any need for her. Especially when she tells them she has no idea what’s going on, that she has, despite the tests she’s run, the quick autopsies she’s performed, no idea why the snakes are all dead.
As far as she can tell, every last one of them is dead.
Floating on the surface, caught in
the reeds, stretched and tangled on the ground, a few dangling from branches in what was left of the Spanish moss.
It had taken almost all day to realize something else— that none of the bodies had been eaten, even nibbled at. Neither the birds nor the insects had touched a single one.
She probably could have stood that, could have stood seeing all the serpents dead, could have taken it with only a raised eyebrow, a puzzled grunt. . She could have; she knew it.
Riders in the Sky - [Millennium Quartet 04] Page 27
