“We’d better get going.” Rachel led her back to the passenger side. “Wouldn’t want to be late for your eye doctor appointment.”
“But the baby’s making you sick. You should let me drive you, Cora.”
Rachel stared at her, heart sinking, wondering if Patsy had seen this confusion. And if her father had refused to.
“I’m okay. I promise, Grandma.”
But as she helped her grandmother back inside the old van, Rachel wondered if either one of them would ever be all right again.
CHAPTER FOUR
Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me …
—William Shakespeare,
from King John
“She’s back to sleeping in his bedroom, Kathy.” Marlene’s younger sister lived in Phoenix, but the two of them talked by phone once or twice a week. Though both had husbands and families of their own, they had mothered each other for so long, the sibling bond had grown as strong as steel.
Marlene recognized the clunk of her sister’s coffee mug as she set it on the counter.
“I knew it,” Kathy burst out. “I offered to stay after the funeral, but she practically shoved me out the door—”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference. As soon as we turned our backs, she’d have been inside. She’s…she’s sleeping in that bed again. His bed.” Marlene was not referring to their father.
“Lord. Probably hasn’t even washed the sheets.”
Marlene made what her sons laughingly called her Primzy-Prude face. “Or dusted—”
“But those could be his actual skin cells.” Though Marlene was the one who most closely resembled their mother, Kathy could do an impression of her that was so dead-on, it raised gooseflesh. “You can’t think I’d just allow the maid to dust them up. Or vacuum.”
Despite the chill zinging up her spine, Marlene laughed. They both did, though it felt a little on the mean side. But laughter helped, more than either the therapy or the antianxiety medication Marlene had tried, more even than the massage sessions her husband, Dan, had paid for—bless his heart—to ease the tension knotted in her neck and shoulders.
“We’re going to have to do something,” Marlene said anxiously. “It isn’t right, letting her live like that.”
“Who cares how she lives?” Kathy’s voice went bitter, but Marlene heard hurt there, too. Since Kathy had been tiny, she’d done her best to cover her pain with anger.
“It’s not like she worries over how we’re doing—or gives a damn about poor Daddy,” Kathy accused. “Do you think she ever said she loved him? After she called for the ambulance, when he was sprawled there, dying, on the bedroom floor? Do you think she held his hand then, even for an instant?”
A tear broke free, but Marlene couldn’t let herself be drawn into that conversation. Couldn’t allow herself to think about their father’s final minutes. “But she’s our mother, Kathy. What will people say if we don’t take care—”
“You know what? I don’t give a shit what people have to say about it.”
Marlene thought that was easy for her sister, who had moved so far away. Kathy didn’t have to face the family friends, the neighbors—everyone who knew what excellent care their father had taken of their mother since the baby of the family had been murdered. She could simply leave it all to Marlene, the way she had so often.
Stupid of her to get mad over it again, when she’d been certain they’d gotten past the longstanding issue. But that was the way of old squabbles between Marlene and her sister. They always squeezed out under pressure.
“What would Daddy say about it?” she couldn’t stop herself from demanding. “I promised him, we both did, that we’d see to her if he was the first to go.”
Marlene heard her sister’s indrawn breath, felt her vacillation. When she finally answered, Kathy’s voice held a strength that Marlene both envied and resented.
“Our father was a loving man. So loving, he couldn’t imagine a woman drained of everything that made her human. So he made excuses for her, babied her instead of demanding that she stop this nonsense and get back to her old self.”
“You can’t force a person to get better. You can’t just demand that she snap out of it.”
“I’m finished with her, Marlene. My own kids need me here now, and my boss—I could get fired for taking off more time after coming back.”
“Fired? I thought things were going so much better at this new place.” Marlene, who had worked in the same office more than ten years, had lost track of how many times her sister had changed jobs. She was beginning to suspect that Kathy herself was the problem, not the “crazy bosses” and “bitchy co-workers” she blamed.
“Well, I didn’t mention it,” said Kathy, “but I took off kind of a lot back when Bryce and I were separated. So between that and the funeral, I’m going to have to work through my vacation to catch up on the backlog. Besides, the price of flights is ridiculous on short notice.”
“What if I helped you with the ticket?” Marlene knew her husband wouldn’t like it, but she had some money squirreled away toward a new sofa and recliners for the family room.
“It’s not just the cost. It’s—it’s Mother. After all this time, all her rejection, I’m finished pretending I feel something for her when I don’t.”
Her sister still cared. Marlene knew it. But there was nothing to be gained by arguing. Once Kathy dropped into Mule Mode, nothing short of dynamite could move her. “So I’m on my own in this?”
“I’m really sorry. If I could do it for anyone, Marl, it would be for you. But I can’t. I just—can’t.”
Marlene’s temper flared as she wished that, for once in their lives, she had the luxury of refusing. “You mean you won’t.”
She banged down the phone in a rare display of temper, but the two sisters’ estrangement didn’t last long.
Only a few short hours later, Marlene called Kathy from the house where both of them, along with their dead brother, had grown up.
The place stood empty, every door and window open. Only a few things were missing. The bedclothes, stripped from one bare mattress. A photo album, and a macabre collection of news clippings. A purse, cosmetic bag, and a few articles of clothing.
And the woman herself, their mother, who had left without her Cadillac…or a word to anyone to explain where she had gone.
The morning’s clouds had long since rolled back by the time Rachel returned to Zeke Pike’s place. She parked behind his pickup, a dust-covered blue Chevy even older than her van, then climbed out, leaving her leather jacket tossed across the passenger seat. For a minute, she stood beside the corral in the late afternoon sunshine, allowing it to warm her through her cotton blouse and jeans. Or maybe she was stalling, dreading another meeting with a man as jarringly abrupt as his name.
He might have startled her at first, in the wake of the unexpected phone threat, but Rachel suspected Mr. Personality was more afraid of her—of everyone—than she was of him. Despite his attempts to alienate her, she found herself wondering what would drive such a man to a solitary life on the high desert.
As the pinto mare nickered and stretched her neck forward, Rachel figured that, gruff or not, Zeke didn’t lack for offers of companionship. She rubbed the mare’s neck while her mind conjured a green-eyed man whose thick hair was dark, wavy, and just long enough to look disreputable, and whose skin had been bronzed and weathered by the elements. A man like that with a build like his could have his choice of women.
If women were his choice. She considered, then immediately discarded any other possibility. Zeke Pike was definitely a hair-on-the-chest, beef-in-the-belly, scratch-where-it-itches sort. Which probably meant his antisocial tendencies were the only factor keeping him alone.
With a final pat for the mare, Rachel said, “Anybody who would save a bag of bones like you has to be more bark than bite, right?”
Since the pinto gave no answer, Rachel told
herself to quit being a wimp and go to Zeke’s workshop to get her pictures. Taking a deep breath, she strode toward the building. This time she noticed that its concrete-block sides still bore the faded outline of the words Superior Wax Co., Candelilla Unit No. 1. Barely visible was the shadowy image of a burro, looking ecstatic beneath an enormous load of bundled sticks. Or more likely, it was gritting its teeth instead of grinning.
Gritting her own, she made for the center of the building, where someone, probably Zeke, had installed a modern garage door. It was halfway up now to let in both air and a measure of late sunlight, rich and golden. In return, the workshop issued the canned music of cheap speakers, which bleated a twangy, old-time instrumental that made her itch to move her feet.
Yet she stood rooted to the spot, for inside, working on a piece of furniture, was a sight to make a nun weep. Even Rachel, who would rather have a root canal than a naked man in her life at the moment, gaped dry-mouthed as she watched the shirtless Zeke lean forward to oil a heavy tabletop. As the sun’s rays gilded him in profile, the cloth in his hand glided like a lover’s over curves and natural imperfections. While muscles moved beneath the surface of his skin like restless spirits, he expertly stroked the brilliance from the reddish wood.
Knowing she could never reproduce this moment—that the instant he saw her, he would don his shirt and growl another warning to stay clear of his private rooms—she lifted her camera and clicked away, losing herself in the play of light and shadow filling her frame.
Even as she took the photos, she knew they would be special. Just as she sensed that Zeke Pike would pitch a fit if he had any inkling she was photographing him and not his work.
He did say you could take pictures of anything inside the workshop or the showroom. Lame or not, the excuse got her through to the moment she recapped her camera lens and cleared her throat loudly to be heard over Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.”
Sure enough, everything changed as soon as Zeke looked up. Grabbing a denim shirt off his workbench, he said, “Sorry. Gettin’ a little hot in here.”
You ain’t whistlin’ Dixie, she thought, but instead of confessing to her stealth photo session, she dropped her gaze to the table’s central base as she moved closer. “You used the tree’s stump for the base.”
He shrugged into the shirt. “Liked the way it twisted, so I buffed it some and attached it underneath.”
“It’s perfect,” she said, resisting the urge to skim her palms over the table’s polished surface, to lose herself in the swirls and faint eyes hidden in the wood’s grain. Natural flaws formed narrow rivers he had inlaid with some beautifully striated blue and copper stone. “This is amazing, Zeke. Just gorgeous. If I had a pile of money, I’d buy it out from under whatever rich customer commissioned it.”
“Be better if I made one just for you. Something you’d want, in particular.”
“But I want this one, in particular.” Smiling, she laid her fingertip on the heavy wood, where she imagined she felt the lingering warmth of his touch. “Too bad I don’t have a dining room to put it in. Or a house. Or that pile of money.”
“First two’re strictly optional. You come up with the last one, then we’ll talk.” Zeke’s eyes smiled, though otherwise, he kept a straight face.
And what a face it was, with those light green eyes set off by the thick, seal-brown brows above them. It occurred to her that she could be falling into lust with something far more problematic than a piece of handcrafted furniture.
He shut off the radio and jerked a nod in the direction of an interior door. She’d noticed it this morning but hadn’t gone snooping. Maybe she’d been put off by its red paint, a less than subtle warning that danger lay behind it.
“I’ll be in my room,” Zeke said, “until you’re done taking pictures.”
What kind of furnishings had he made for his own use? She tamped down the image of an immense bed, carved with the lines of wind and flowing water and covered with striped Mexican blankets.
“I—um, I don’t need quiet for my work.”
He shrugged again, looking as remote and unassailable as the sheer face of a mountain. “Well, I need it, so just honk your horn to let me know you’re leaving.”
He went inside without a backward glance, a dismissal so abrupt, she grumbled, “Maybe you don’t bite, Mr. Zeke Pike, but I’ve had just about enough of being barked at.”
The Spirit Guides had grown impatient, and the lights had ways of making their disapproval known. By refusing to appear, for one thing, and depriving the observer of their wisdom.
Over the years, the lights had come at strange times and even stranger places. Not only to the viewing area where the freaks and tourists went to gawk each night or among the shadowed plains at the feet of the Chinati Mountains, but to private places where they revealed their true selves to the observer.
The first time, it had been a crawl space, hot and filthy beneath a trailer. It stank of cat piss and writhed with centipedes, spiders and a nest of buzzing, stinging wasps, but The Child didn’t dare cry out, and leaving—leaving was unthinkable. Sent there for some long-forgotten transgression—most likely stealing food meant for The Others, The Child was forgotten, left all night.
Until the Spirit Guides slipped in through a crack in the rusted metal skirting, then danced about the space as they
flashed blue, then white, then yellow. Terrified, The Child finally succumbed to the need to cry out, weeping while scrambling into the darkest corner, breaking tiny fingernails in blind desperation to dig free.
The twin lights followed, blinking out a pattern beyond human comprehension. But The Child, looking up through tears at first, decided they seemed friendly. And over the years, as the glowing visitors returned to darkened bedrooms, closets, and even once, the bottom of a dry cistern still echoing with high-pitched screams of panic, their code revealed itself, along with the messages they brought.
Messages of hope, imparting wisdom that helped The Child understand that sniveling and screaming would never stop The Others, for sniveling and screaming had been what they wanted all along.
When The Child listened, things grew a little better. So when the lights flashed dark instruction, they were eagerly attended.
Even on those occasions when they called for a death.
Occasions such as their last visitation, after which the observer had allowed witnesses, logistics—and pure cowardice—to heap on delay after delay.
So now the lights had vanished, leaving loneliness and panic rising like a flood tide in their wake.
The Spirit Guides must be restored—and quickly.
Even if that meant carnage at the airfield, where a brazen killer was preparing to take wing.
CHAPTER FIVE
The first historical record of [the Marfa lights] recalls that in 1883 a young cowhand, Robert Reed Ellison, saw a flickering light while he was driving cattle through Paisano Pass and wondered if it was the campfire of Apache Indians. He was told by other settlers that they often saw the lights, but when they investigated they found no ashes or other evidence of a campsite. Joe and Sally Humphreys, also early settlers, reported their first sighting of the lights in 1885. Cowboys herding cattle on the prairies noticed the lights and in the summer of 1919 rode over the mountains looking for the source, but found nothing. World War I observers feared that the lights were intended to guide an invasion. During World War II pilots training at the nearby Midland Army Air Field outside Marfa looked for the source of the elusive lights from the air, again with no success.
—Julia Cauble Smith,
from The Handbook of Texas Online
Friday, February 15
Startled by the ringing telephone, Rachel jerked out of a sound sleep to both darkness and confusion. By the second ring, she remembered she was in the tiny rental casita, her temporary home. Just two days before, her dad had gotten her this cell phone, and so far as she knew, he was the only person who had the new number.
Something’
s wrong with Grandma…Rachel fumbled until she found the phone where she had left it on the night-stand, beside the glowing red numbers that read 4:18. With her thoughts focused on her family, she didn’t even glance at the caller ID window before she answered.
“Dad? Is something—”
“I know where you are, killer. Murderess.” The woman’s voice formed a fragile skin of hatred over an icy lake of malice.
Not again, not here, too. Rachel’s eyes stung with frustration. The woman sounded different this time, raspier and more unbalanced than she had when the calls had started, back during the trial in Philadelphia. Was this even the same person? It must be, for Rachel’s most persistent—and frustratingly anonymous—tormentor had a knack for getting private numbers. Still, how had she found this one so damned quickly?
“You are one sick bitch,” Rachel snapped, her fury outrunning her better judgment. Responding to this nut case only encouraged her. “Get some help and get a life.”
“I have one, but you won’t soon. Because I’m coming for you, Raaaachel. You can’t run far enough or fast enough. I’ll always know where you hide—”
Rachel’s trembling fingers found and pushed the power button. From hard experience, she’d learned this was the only way to stop the harrassment. If she simply hung up, Psycho Bitch would merely hit redial and start back up where she’d left off. Invariably, the woman blocked her number, and the phone company’s attempts to trace her hadn’t helped, since she was using—and frequently changing—disposable, prepaid cell phones.
As Rachel burrowed deep beneath her covers, her pulse pounded and her ears strained for the slightest sound. And not just any sound, but those that ruled her nightmares: the turning of the closet doorknob, the quiet footsteps of an intruder who had stripped off all his clothing and hidden there in darkness until he’d thought she was asleep. The casita might be chilly, but she felt sweat trickling from her temples. Despite the fact that she had checked and rechecked both the closet and the door’s locks earlier, she could almost swear she heard the quick scrape of someone’s breathing—Kyle’s breathing—and see the featureless, black silhouette looming above her that last instant before she reached the gun.
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