Not quite, Sheppard thought “Did Steele use tarot cards in his therapy?”
Vic looked surprised. “Yeah, how’d you know?”
Sheppard told him about the seven tarot cards he’d found in Steele’s desk drawer. “Each of them was sent with a gift to Rae Steele.”
“What were the cards?”
Sheppard ticked them off. He knew them by heart now. “What a sick fuck he is,” Vic muttered.
“Who?”
“Hal. He must’ve sent the cards. See, Steele had each of us pick a tarot card that we felt represented who we were. It was part of our routine for self-examination or some shit like that. Mine was The Tower. Hal’s was the Hanged Man. Hal must’ve sent her the cards knowing that Steele would recognize them as the ones that represented the seven of us in Delphi. Christ, I bet it made him incredibly uptight. He couldn’t go to the cops; he’d have to explain about Delphi. So what happens? Hal kills Steele and nabs his wife.”
Onto the tape, Sheppard thought, right where it belonged. “How do you know that?”
“I know, okay? I just know.”
They reached Defray Beach and Vic turned west over the bridge. He followed the road through the refurbished downtown, an area of several blocks that had always reminded Sheppard of the small towns in Stephen King’s books, places where nothing was what it seemed.
“Don’t you want to know more about Hal?” Vic asked. “I figured you were getting around to that.”
Vic laughed. “Yeah, eventually.” The car bounced over the railroad tracks and into a rundown section of town. “Almost from the beginning, Fletcher and Steele recognized that me, Ed, and Hal were the best of the seven. They put us together on projects, shit like that. Anyway, I was the first one to vanish. Fletcher tried to get the others to look for me, but they gave her bad information or no information at all. Ed and Hal finally split, too.
“Not too long after we’d split, one of the women in Delphi was killed in a car accident outside of Durham, North Carolina. It wasn’t any accident, she was murdered. Then another guy in the program bit the dust—an apartment fire supposedly caused by a space heater. By then, we’d realized they were eliminating the players. Now we three are the only ones left out of the seven.”
He drove up and down side streets and kept leaning forward to rub at the fog on the glass. “Let’s stop until the rain lets up,” Sheppard suggested.
“Uh-uh. I think we’ve got a tail.”
As Sheppard turned to look out the rear window, he unzipped his pocket and stuck his hand in, fiddling with recorder to turn the tape over. Vic was so uptight about being followed he didn’t notice. “If someone’s tailing us, he’s invisible,” Sheppard remarked.
“A car was back there when we were going through downtown Delray.”
“You think Fletcher knocked off the other four in the program? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I don’t know if she actually did it, but she was responsible for it. When the three of us split, the funding started drying up and the people who knew about Delphi were getting real nervous about how they were going to continue to control ex-cons. So it was decided the whole thing, participants included, would be scrapped.”
“You think, but you don’t know for sure.”
“I know for sure, man. If you don’t want to buy it, fine, suit yourself. But I know what I know. I also know that some spook from another agency had a lot to say about what happened and didn’t happen in Delphi. For a while, Hal worked exclusively with him and Steele; I don’t think Fletcher even knew about it.”
“What was the spook’s name?”
“Richard. That’s all I could ever pick up. He was a honcho in one of the security organizations, I don’t know which one.”
“That’s damn vague,” Sheppard remarked.
“Yeah, well, a lot of it was vague from where I stood.”
“Why did Hal kill Steele?”
Vic wasn’t quite as quick to answer this time. “It’s complicated, Sheppard. Originally, we talked about killing both him and Fletcher, to be free of them.” He lit another cigarette. “You don’t know what it’s like to have to live with eyes in the back of your goddamn head. That’s how Fletcher made us feel.
“Anyway, I never really thought it would happen and frankly, I wasn’t all that keen on the idea. I have a fine life now, why fuck with it? I can live with the paranoia. But then Hal did it and when we met, he told Ed and me about Rae. That’s when I realized all along that he’s had this private agenda. Kill Steele, nab his wife. He claims he still wants Fletcher dead and that’s supposedly what he’s gearing up for. Maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t, I don’t give a shit. I just want out of the whole fucking thing.”
“Where did you meet with Hal?”
“Bay Pub, a hangout in Florida Bay. I don’t know for sure, but I think he lives somewhere in the Glades. I got no idea where Ed lives and he and Hal don’t know where I live. We figured it was best that way.” He had turned east again, slipping into the stream of traffic.
“What’s Ed’s last name?”
“I can’t tell you that. Ed and I have had our differences, but I got no problem with him. I know Hal’s got a cell phone, because that’s how he and Ed stay in touch. Then Ed passes stuff on to me.”
“I thought you said you kept in touch telepathically or something.”
“Hal’s the only one of us who can reach far enough to do that. His talent is like a wild mood swing, okay? It isn’t always there, it isn’t always something he can control. But when he’s hot, watch the fuck out. If he really extends himself, he can make the inside of your head feel like it’s going to explode. If he keeps it up, capillaries in your cheeks burst, your nose starts to bleed, you’re literally crippled with pain.”
He’s describing what happened to me. And to Mira.
“The attack lasts about thirty seconds to a minute. If it continues for another three to five minutes, you begin to bleed internally. In six to eight minutes, your spleen bursts or your intestines rupture. In fifteen to twenty minutes, you’re dead. That’s how Delphi used him best. It’s called telekinesis, Sheppard.”
“A bullet killed Steele,” Sheppard said flatly.
“Only because Hal can’t do this with everybody. He could never reach into Fletcher or Steele, we don’t know why.”
Sheppard knew why; he felt the weight of the ELF device in his pocket. “So whose brain did Hal turn to mush?”
“The list isn’t that long, but it’s impressive,” Vic said dryly, and proceeded to tick off the incidents.
A chopper pilot in Iran. A suburban housewife who opened fire in a D.C. subway station. A federal building in Minneapolis. The suicide of a key figure in the Senate.
The whole thing smacked of conspiracy theories, too far out there. It sounded, in fact, like Forest Gump. Pick an event and the deadly trio had been involved.
“There were other things, too. Things Hal has never admitted that happened when he was working with Steele and this Richard spook. Now and then I got a glimmer of something from that time.”
“Like what? Can you be specific?”
“The death of a former First Lady that was actually suicide. Hal messed with her head.”
Sheppard started to say something, but Vic suddenly hissed, “There it is. The pale sedan three car lengths back. I’m sure it’s the same car I saw before.”
Sheppard glanced back, Vic pressed his foot to the gas pedal. The car shot forward and Sheppard’s head snapped around.
Vic swerved into the other lane and charged toward the intersection, tires shrieking against the wet pavement.
He raced through the red light, dodging oncoming cars. Horns blared, Sheppard shouted at him to slow down. But Vic drove like a madman, lost in his own world, his body hunched over the steering wheel, his face seized up with a kind of wildness. The engine roared, the speedometer needle leaped past eighty.
Just ahead, red ligh
ts flashed, their glow washing across the windshield like blood. It took Sheppard a moment to realize they had circled and reached the bridge again, that the red lights meant the bridge was about to rise.
“Don’t do it!” Sheppard shouted, and lunged for the steering wheel, trying to seize control of the car.
One of Vic’s bony arms crashed across the bridge of Sheppard’s nose. Pain lit up the inside of his sinus cavities and the car weaved like a drunk across the road. Sheppard grabbed Vic by the back of the neck and slammed his head into the steering wheel, knocking him out. Sheppard pushed him aside and grabbed onto the wheel, but it was too late. The tires struck the incline of the bridge as it began to rise.
The engine sputtered and died, the wipers quit, the car was airborne. He didn’t feel any sense of motion and yet, wind whistled past the windows. He felt like he was suspended inside some lightweight bubble, drifting in a hot air balloon. And then everything inside of him screamed, Get out get out and he kicked open the passenger door.
Wind and rain rushed in, the blackness of the intracoastal waters swirled below him. The car’s nose suddenly plunged forward, everything inside rattling, sliding around, tumbling. Sheppard leaped.
He struck the water feet first. The impact jarred him down to his very cells, knocked the air from his lungs, and he sank through the wet blackness. He hit bottom and his feet sank into muck, trapping him. His brain shrieked for air, adrenaline raced through him. He somehow got his shoes off and swam frantically for the surface, swam against the weight of his gun, his clothes, the current.
As his head broke through the surface, an explosion rocked the air. Flames and plumes of black, greasy smoke sprang toward the sky.
Sheppard treaded water, staring at the fireball, filling his lungs with air, then he dived and swam away from the bridge, swam as fast as his arms and legs would carry him, swam until he could swim no more.
Chapter 23
Fletcher stood at the edge of a seawall with several dozen other people, watching the frenzied activity on the bridge and in the water below. Fire trucks and ambulances had arrived within minutes of the explosion. Cops, paramedics, and firemen now swarmed like ants over the bridge. Coast Guard cutters cruised through the debris.
She couldn’t very well identify herself; she didn’t want to be associated in any way with what had happened here. But she needed answers. She needed to know if Indrio and Sheppard had both been in the car when it had exploded.
She moved along the seawall, rain drumming the hood of her raincoat. The flashing lights from the emergency vehicles on the bridge washed through the air, illuminating the faces of bystanders huddled beneath umbrellas. The rain had put out the fire, but the air smelled scorched, ruined.
Fletcher pulled out her badge as she neared the bridge and hoped that whoever she showed it to wouldn’t remember her name. She just wanted to cross the bridge and get a look at the remains of the car.
She walked over to one of the cops and held up her badge. “Anything I can do to help, sergeant?”
“Thanks, ma’am, but we’re doing okay.”
“What happened, anyway?”
“The bridge operator says the driver tried to beat the bridge as it was going up. Damn fool.”
“Just one person inside?”
“I really don’t know, ma’am. The paramedics are going through the debris. You might talk to them or to the bridge operator. He’s over in the ambulance now. We’re damn lucky it was raining and traffic was nil.”
“Mind if I take a look?”
“Go ahead. Watch where you step. Pieces are strewn all over the place.”
The car had struck on the east side of the bridge, just beyond the point where the asphalt began. She had seen the explosion and pieces of flaming debris shooting out in all directions. But up close, the grim sight chilled her, particularly because she knew she was partially responsible: the smoldering ruin of scorched and twisted metal, the carpet of glass shards, the stink of smoke. The rain had helped contain and squelch the fire and now firefighters poked through the largest heap of debris. She walked past them, anxious to speak to the bridge operator first.
The ambulance was parked down near the roadblock, the rear doors open. An overweight Latino in a rain slicker, jeans, and a Marlins baseball cap was inside. He held an oxygen mask over his mouth as a paramedic took his blood pressure.
Fletcher stuck her head inside the door. “Excuse me.” She showed her badge. “You mind if I ask him a few questions?”
“No problem,” the paramedic replied, and spoke to the man in Spanish.
The bridge operator nodded and kept sucking greedily at the air.
“How many people were inside the car, sir? Could you tell?”
He held up two fingers, a peace sign, then slipped the mask off his face. He sounded short of breath, as if he’d been running.
“Maybe two, I not sure. It happen too fast, me entiende? I be in bridgehouse, the bridge it be coming up, then … the car it flies off the bridge…” His hand cruised through the air in front of him, then his fingertips plunged downward. “I see something, I not know what, falling out of the car. Then…He clapped his hands together, a sharp, startling noise. “Boom. Un explosion.”
“Do you think this falling object was a person?”
“No sé.”
A traumatized man who could barely speak English was about as reliable a witness as a drunk. “Are you sure something fell? It was raining awfully hard, it was dark.”
He tapped the corner of his eye. “Juan know what he see, eh? Something fall. If it a man, I hope he has wings.”
She wasn’t going to get any farther with this guy. Fletcher thanked him and went over to one of the firefighters. Badge, greeting, the same routine. The badge didn’t impress him and the interruption obviously irritated him. Tough shit, she thought. “Have you found any bodies?”
“Nothing whole,” he replied.
“Is there enough to tell whether the body is male or female? Black or white?”
A veil of water poured over the end of the visor on his helmet. “Have a look.” He motioned toward a body bag at the side of the road.
“May I borrow your flashlight?”
He handed it to her and turned away, making it clear she was on her own. Fletcher went over to the body bag, untied it, and shone the flashlight inside. Her stomach heaved. The mass of scorched flesh and bone was probably a limb, but she couldn’t determine the gender or the race. She quickly tied the bag, returned the firefighter’s flashlight, then hurried away from the ruin, off the bridge and across the shopping center parking lot to her car.
Chilled and beat, she stripped off her raincoat, her running shoes and socks, cranked up the car and put on the heater. She sat there for a long time, eyes burning, stomach cramped with hunger, shivering as the warm air poured through the car.
The windows fogged up and her view of the outside world shrank to smears of red and blue from the lights of the emergency vehicles. It was as if she had suddenly developed cataracts that, second by second, swallowed her sight.
You fucked up big time, Lenora. The voice was her own, but she heard it as Krackett’s.
For the first time in years, she felt deeply and desperately afraid that she wouldn’t be able to fix what had gone wrong.
Thunder woke her, tremendous booms that echoed in the lagoon with frightening clarity. Lightning lit the inside of the chickee in a strange, watery blue that possessed weight and texture; it felt as cool as a mother’s hand against her face. Rain tapped against the chickee’s thatch and tin roof, an oddly soothing sound.
Rae, no longer restrained or drugged, pushed up on her elbows. She glanced in Hal’s direction. In the flash of blue light, she could see only his head, poking out from under the sheet that covered him.
He saved my life.
Fact.
He kidnapped me.
Also a fact.
She’d spent a lot
of time the last few days examining these facts from every conceivable angle, then applying them to her plan. Of the two facts, the first seemed the most important now. Would her husband have saved her life in the same situation? She didn’t think so. Andy’s primary concern in life was Andy, bottom line, end of story.
The realization filled her with relief. It made her feel better in an abstract, dreamy kind of way, as though she had carried the question around inside of her for years, an embryo so small she’d been barely aware of it.
She pulled her legs to her chest and clasped her arms around them, thinking of the Rae she had been. That woman, Andy’s wife, had been a fictional person, a personality patched together from what she’d believed Andy wanted in a wife. She was no longer that woman. She didn’t know who she was now or what she was becoming, but she knew she wasn’t fictional.
Wind blew through the open windows, a wet wind that smelled of the Glades, a rich, almost menstrual odor. All that wilderness, she thought. All that water. She didn’t know her specific location within this wilderness or if it even showed on a map. If she could find the paddles to the boat and escape, where would she escape to? The mangroves? And then what? How far could she get before he reached and found her? A mile? Two? Five?
You don’t have a choice. Not if she wanted to see her son again.
Rae rolled onto her knees and peered across the chickee. She could detect his shape on the mat where he usually slept. For a split second, she considered killing him as he lay there. But with what? Her bare hands? The only object within easy reach was the rocking chair. If it creaked, if the floor creaked, he would be instantly awake, he was a light sleeper, a part of him remained forever alert, vigilant.
And if he didn’t kill her, it would mean the handcuffs again, the drugs, everything like before.
Forget it. Rae got to her feet, unzipped her shorts, rolled them off over her hips. She drew her T-shirt over her head. A part of her mind worked frantically, sealing up the truth and burying it so deeply even God wouldn’t find it. What would happen next would be buried in the same place, forever beyond the light of day.
The Hanged Man Page 24
