Although this final statement had been meant to sound like an aside, or to sound as if it contained some kind of upside-down ethical princi ple, Jan knew what it meant. There was no way Max would let them go whether they told him what he wanted to know or not. And, even though he’d had a stroke, she knew Steve would feel the same way.
After Max was gone, Legless and the guy named Jimmy, also wearing a knit cap, hustled her out of the van. It was still windy but the rain had stopped. Although her ankle exploded with pain when ever she put weight on it, she felt unfettered compared to inside the van. If she dropped to the ground, maybe she could roll to one side and trip the one named Jimmy who was smaller than Max or Dino or even Legless. Maybe she could stand up and run. Ignore the pain and run like hell. Or maybe in the process of falling she could rub her face against one of them, dislodge the tape, and scream loud enough and long enough to be heard clear across to the other side of the building, or even inside the building.
As she thought about this, Max and Dino came out from behind the van. Dino carried a bundle over one shoulder. Although it was dark in the parking lot, her eyes had grown accustomed to the dark ness and she saw legs dangling and realized the bundle was someone wrapped in something. When a barely audible moan came from the person being carried, she knew it must be Steve. If she was going to make a move, now was the time. But something stopped her.
It was a voice, Steve’s voice. Not his voice coming from the bun dle, but his voice coming to her from the distant past, back when they first met. She had been telling Steve about her past, about her life as a stripper. She remembered the way he had looked at her for a long time before saying, “Nothing in life is ever what it appears to be. When you were working in those places, you weren’t at all what you seemed. Although the men watching you had thoughts about who you were, we both know those thoughts were simply illusions. Just as illusions change from moment to moment, people also change from moment to moment. Who we were a moment ago is not who we are now. When it comes to time, we’re all wandering Gypsies.”
Recalling Steve’s words made her want to plead that she be al lowed to embrace him. But recalling these words from the past also stopped time. And in that instant of stopped time, she felt as though she had absorbed into her mind some of the precious thoughts that had been lost to Steve when he had his stroke. Details not only from their lives together, but details from every case he’d ever had. Among these details was the strong impression that the bundle being carried by Dino was not Steve at all, but someone with much longer legs.
And so she did not struggle when they led her to the car and put her into the back seat. Jimmy crawled in first and dragged her in behind him, then Legless vaulted in beside her, folding his wheel chair and dragging it in so that it rested on the floor in front of him. From inside the car she watched as the bundle was loaded into the van, Dino and Max climbing in after it and activating the mechanism that brought the lift back inside. The transfer into the van had been done carefully, like transferring someone in pain from wheelchair to bed. Or like transferring someone so as little as possible could be seen of him.
As she sat between Jimmy and Legless in the back seat, watching and listening as Legless lowered the window, she was convinced the man carried into the van was not Steve. If they wanted them to talk, wouldn’t they have kept them both in the van? And if they had them both, why stay here instead of driving somewhere else? But, no sooner had these thoughts consoled her for the decision not to act, and she began to have doubts. What if it was Steve in the van?
Between the headrests of the front seat of the car she could see the red and green lights of a scanner mounted high in front of the dash. But, although the scanner was on and sometimes flashed its lights in dicating it was moving to a new signal, no sound came from it. Then she began to hear noises coming from the van, dull thumping noises followed by long, deep moans. As the moans that might or might not be coming from Steve drifted in through the car window with the damp cold air, Jimmy and Legless began running their hands over her body, quickly finding places to go inside beneath her clothes.
The moans from the van became louder. The cold, cold hands searching her flesh absorbed whatever warmth was left in her. She began trembling uncontrollably.
Because of the turn of events that led him to Orland Park, and the
radio call that brought him back to Hell in the Woods, Steve knew Jan’s investigation of Marjorie’s death had touched a sensitive nerve. Jan was missing, and regardless of his condition he was determined to find her.
As he drove through the main parking lot he saw Jan’s Audi, its red finish glowing wet beneath the overhead lights. A squad car was parked next to the Audi with only its parking lights lit. He drove down the aisle slowly and could see that the Audi’s driver’s side was dented and scratched and the driver’s side window was open. No, smashed in, the radio call had said the window was smashed in. Mud was spattered on the downslope of the rear fenders, and as he contin ued down the aisle away from the Audi, he tried to reconstruct the damage to the side of the Audi in his screwed-up brain so he could garner what he could from the details.
The image was still there, glowing beneath the overhead lights in his brain. Not a clean sweep, not scratch marks going in one direc tion. Zigzag scratch marks as if someone had driven into the side of the Audi. And then there were the tires. Not rain tires with the deep center groove the way he’d expected. But wait. Jan hadn’t said any thing about buying rain tires. His brain had created that. But there was something about rain tires.
Suddenly he recalled a brightly lit tire store, the strong smell of rubber tires and a particular tire in a display stand as he ran his finger down its deep center groove. A discussion comparing the grooves in the tires to arteries had taken place in his room at Hell in the Woods while he and Jan looked at an illustrated magazine ad for rain tires. But it was not Jan’s Audi that had rain tires. It was his old Honda.
The train of thought was moving too fast, moving away from where he wanted it to be. The rain tires were important because he had seen rain tire tracks at the dead end. The dead end was important because that’s where the police calls and the trail of discarded maga zines had led him. The trail of magazines was important because they must have come from inside Jan’s Audi. And if they had come from inside the Audi, then Jan must have thrown them from the Audi as she was being pursued.
One of the obvious things he could do tempted him. He could turn down the next aisle in the lot and approach from the other direc tion. He could pull into the vacant spot facing the squad car that was parked next to Jan’s Audi. He could flash his lights and one of the of ficers in the car would come to his window and he would struggle to tell the officer his dilemma.
But there was danger in this train of thought. Down the line, after the struggle to explain—first to one officer, then to the other, then to a detective who would be called—he could visualize his being taken back into Hell in the Woods where one of his therapists—or even one of the crack Hell in the Woods psychological interns—would have made the drive in to assist with the questioning. He could see it all, an endless night of not being able to explain, while the possibility of finding Jan becomes more remote. He was a stroke victim, the in side of his brain like a snake eating its tail, especially if it has to think of too much at one time. During the questioning, as the possibility of finding Jan faded, his attempts to logically explain the situation would become more and more futile.
Even thinking about being questioned was dangerous because he imagined a man in shadows questioning him, and this man became the one from the past, the one who could be his father, or Joe Friday, or a grown-up Dwayne Matusak, or even Sandor Lakatos who would at any moment reach behind him for his violin, put it beneath his chin, close his dark eyes, and begin playing. Or it could be Jimmy Carter. What was there about Jimmy Carter that kept dipping into the soup?
Was it Marjorie’s mention of her husband’s distain for Carter? Was every
crazy thing ever told him by Marjorie simply adding to the jum ble in his head?
He kept driving, circling the huge parking lot, pausing only to glance down at the notes he’d written and remembering to look for cars or vans that matched the descriptions and plate numbers he’d got ten from Tamara. But even though he looked for vehicles and plate numbers, he could not help thinking about the magazines he’d seen strewn on the road, and about the rain tire tracks he’d seen in the mud at the dead end, and about the Audi’s dented side and broken window and the mud on the downslope of its fenders.
As he approached the section of the lot adjoining the long nursing home wing that stuck out into the woods, he saw the narrow road that led around to the back lot where staff parked and where trucks made deliveries to the loading dock, the same loading dock onto which he’d emerged when he escaped from Hell in the Woods earlier that evening. Out through the delivery entrance because there were no guards there. And if one or more of Marjorie’s relatives, or whoever else might have killed her, had reason to take Jan, then they might have come back here to get him, to take him out through the delivery entrance where they would not be stopped.
That must be it. He knew something they needed kept quiet, some thing to do with family secrets. Or maybe he knew something they needed to know, something to do with the keys Marjorie referred to. If either of these possibilities were true, Marjorie’s killer, or killers, would come after him by going into Hell in the Woods the back way, the same way they went in when they killed Marjorie in the first place.
When he turned onto the narrow road leading to the back park ing lot, headlights blinded him. A tall vehicle, a truck, came at him, going fast, bouncing up and down on the uneven pavement so that the blinding caused by the headlights was complete and he had to pull the Lincoln to the side and stop.
As the truck roared past, he glanced up at the boxy shape of it and saw something that made him pause, something that brought back re cent words spoken to him harshly while he lay in pain on the floor of his room. Stenciled on the white side of the truck box in huge black letters were the words, “Christ Health Care Supplies.”
The truck continued past him down the narrow access road to ward the main lot. Steve watched it in his side mirror. It said, “Christ Health Care Supplies” on its back doors and as he stared at the reced ing truck, strange thoughts went through his mind. When he was young, his mother had wanted him to become a priest. He wasn’t sure if he actually remembered this or if he was simply recalling what he’d been told by Jan following the stroke. His mother had wanted him to become more Christ-like. But this also seemed strange because in his mind now was an intense feeling that Christ was evil. No, not Christ, not Jesus Christ himself. A friend of Jesus Christ. Yes, a friend of Jesus Christ would come along next time to warn him about his inter est in how Marjorie slipped and fell in the hallway near the janitors’ closet where he was first warned by—what was his name?—Tyrone! Yes, Tyrone had warned him in the janitors’ closet, and very recently— was it last night?—Tyrone had warned him again. And within that warning had been the threat that a friend of Christ himself would come next time.
He cranked the steering wheel around and floored the Lincoln, spinning the tires on the lawn and squealing them on the access road as he chased after the Christ Health Care truck. Probably because the truck slowed down in the lot so as not to attract the attention of the cops next to Jan’s car, he caught up to it on the main road just beyond the traffic signal at the Hell in the Woods entrance.
The truck had double rear wheels and he knew it was not the vehi cle with the single set of rain tires. Also, it was not one of the vehicles on his list. But the fact the truck was here now, with Jan missing and someone worried about what she knew and what he knew, along with the fact the driver of the truck seemed in a hurry … all of this was enough to make him follow.
Maybe he’d been wrong all along in thinking Marjorie’s death had something to do with her family, or with some conspiracy. Maybe the aide named Tyrone really did have something to do with her death. And if he did, then maybe Tyrone, and whoever was driving the Christ truck, knew where Jan was.
As the truck moved farther away from Hell in the Woods, the driver eased off, not seeming so much in a hurry. And in the traffic, Steve was able to tuck in close behind, out of sight of the side mirrors, and imagine that maybe Jan was in the back of the truck. Or, if not, maybe the truck had been sent after him and, having failed to find him in his room on the third floor, was returning to wherever Jan was being held. Maybe the leather jacket guy from the television lounge, having discovered that he was missing from his room, was also inside the Christ Health Care truck.
Details. A reason for everything. A reason for living. The engine of the Lincoln responding to his left foot as he tailgates the truck on which the word “Christ” is stenciled. The word “Christ” drawing him forward toward salvation.
Toward Jan.
As Valdez exited east on Interstate 290, he saw a sign announcing they were on the Eisenhower Expressway and he thought, yet another ex
pressway named after a dead President. On the Eisenhower, traffic slowed and became sluggish, making Valdez think of sluggish econ omies and inflation and recessions of the past. Spray lifting from the wet pavement coated the windshield of the rental car. The wiper blades, obviously in need of changing, left phlegmy streaks that re flected red taillights and yellowish overhead lights. Beside him, Han-ley cleared his throat as if about to say something, but was silent.
Their last conversation had been about Jimmy Carter’s defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and about an unnecessary con spiracy to guarantee the election’s outcome. Valdez wondered if Jimmy Carter would ever have expressways named after him. Perhaps he al ready did in Georgia, but Valdez had not traveled to Atlanta in a while and was not sure. The Jimmy Carter Expressway simply sounded like something that should be on evening traffic reports in Atlanta.
Valdez thought back to his phone conversation with Skinner on the secure line as he was about to eat his dinner back in his Miami apartment. Although the phone call had been earlier in the day, it seemed like several days had gone by. He should have known when he became part of Operation Maturity that it would some day come to this. Clever name, Skinner had insisted in the beginning. OM as in Old Man, from his and Skinner’s amateur radio days, but in this case it really meant Old Men because there were several still alive who knew of the various election games played in recent decades.
Although one side of the political spectrum played a little rougher, both sides had played these games. And, Valdez knew, both sides and the entire political fabric of the nation would be severely damaged if any of the games were revealed. The media and the public were ex cited by contests. They cheered and jeered the contestants as if they were sports figures, but in the end they would abandon the game if they knew what had gone on behind the scenes. In a way the nation would have a stroke, a final stroke in which the stroke victims forget everything handed down by the forefathers.
When traffic slowed to a crawl, Valdez was able to turn off the windshield wipers. He glanced toward the passenger seat. Although it was dark out, the overhead expressway lights allowed him to see Han-ley had closed his eyes.
“Looks like it will be a while before we arrive at the rehabilitation facility,” he said.
“So it does,” said Hanley, opening his eyes.
“You don’t seem anxious about it.”
Hanley cleared his throat. “I’m not. Our contact will wait for us. Whatever happens happens.”
“That’s not like you,” said Valdez.
“It’s the weather this evening,” said Hanley. “Did you ever notice that when the weather is like this, the years seem to catch up?”
“Yes,” said Valdez. “I was just having nostalgic thoughts. Ex pressways named after Presidents who were in power when we were young men.”
“I know they’ve got an Eisenhower and a Kennedy Expressway in Chicago
,” said Hanley. “What others do they have?”
“The others are named after local dead politicians,” said Valdez. “Except the Stevenson. From Illinois, but a national figure. Remem ber Stevenson at the UN during the Cuban Missile Crisis?”
“I do,” said Hanley. Then in an oratorical voice, “Mr. Ambassa dor, I’m prepared to wait until Hell freezes over for your answer.”
Valdez chuckled, “Now we really sound like two old goats.”
“But not old enough to know about those elections,” said Hanley.
“What about them?” asked Valdez.
“I was simply wondering if tricks had been played during the Eisenhower-Stevenson or Kennedy-Nixon campaigns. I guess enough time has passed. By the time someone decides to look into those elec tions in more detail, any heads that might have rolled will be six feet under.”
“I know what you mean,” said Valdez, as he signaled to move into the right lane.
“Is our exit coming up?” asked Hanley. “I didn’t hear the GPS lady.”
“Not yet,” said Valdez. “But I can see by the arrow on the display that our exit will be on the right and I don’t want to be held hostage in this lane.”
“That’s a telling comment,” said Hanley.
“What is?”
“Being held hostage,” said Hanley. “You’ve obviously been con templating what I said earlier.”
“What’s that?” asked Valdez.
“Come now,” said Hanley, turning part way toward him in his seat. “You know what this is all about.”
“How could I?”
“Skinner’s spoken to you, too, hasn’t he?”
“He has,” said Valdez.
Hanley turned back to the windshield and looked ahead. “Yes, he told me you knew some of it. And I can only assume you’ve guessed the rest.” Hanley smiled at the windshield. “Mentioning hostages like that.”
Final Stroke Page 36
