Paco frowned. “Pam.”
Rain thrummed on the porch roof so hard the floor vibrated, and the curtain blew inward. Paco and Virgil both stared at it. Then, when neither Jimmy nor some horrible shadow burst through, they each sighed and turned to face one another again.
“You got nothing more to say to me?” asked Virgil.
“About what?” asked Paco, eyeing him nervously.
Virgil shrugged. “About the day you killed Albert? About what you heard or saw?”
Paco swallowed a large lump in his throat.
“I guess I’ll be going,” said Virgil, starting past him toward the kitchen.
“Don’t leave me here!” screamed Paco.
“Then talk.”
Sweat trickled down Paco’s cheeks. “I don’t know nothing about no curse. When I got there, the old man was already dead.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Paco.”
“Okay. Okay. But I didn’t kill him. Swear to God. I kind of passed out. When I came to there was blood everywhere. I couldn’t beat up a man that bad if I tried.”
Virgil stared at the little crook, certain he was telling the truth. Whatever killed the girl had more than likely killed Albert, and probably Rich and those guys on the beach in Galveston, as well.
“But you came here to kill Albert, right?”
Paco shook his head so hard sweat flew. “I didn’t. Jimmy didn’t want the old man dead. He’s really pissed at me about that. He wanted information on Jake Crowley. Any dirt we could dig up. And he wanted Crowley to know that we knew where his family was.”
“You left your footprint on a piece of newspaper at the scene of the crime,” Virgil reminded him.
“I didn’t do it. Honest to God. Maybe I stepped in some blood . . . There was blood all over the fucking place. But I didn’t kill him.”
Virgil nodded. “I believe you, Paco.”
“So what are you gonna do, then?” asked Paco, glaring again. “You ain’t gonna leave me here?”
“Got to,” said Virgil, not able to put the slightest empathy into his voice.
“You said you wouldn’t leave me!” screamed Paco.
Virgil shook his head. “I don’t believe I ever really said that.”
He hurried quietly through the house. When he reached the back door he hesitated for only an instant, the weight of Paco’s and Jimmy’s pistols bulging in his pants. He eased open the freezer door and quietly slid them both behind packages of frozen vegetables, closing the door silently.
If Jimmy was watching the house it made sense that he’d be doing so out front, figuring Virgil to exit that way. Instead he slipped through the back door, closing it quickly behind him. He waded across the backyard into the trees where he dropped to his knees, surrounded by bracken, waiting impatiently for his eyes to grow accustomed to the near-total darkness. There was no way he could chance turning the flashlight on, not even for an instant. That would be like sending up a flare for Jimmy.
It took him half an hour to creep from the rear of the house to the road. And all that time he tried to remember everything his father had taught him about hunting more than fifty years before. That was all this was, after all. A hunt. It was just that his prey was an intelligent animal trained in every way there was to kill a man. That thought kept Virgil’s heart thumping in his chest, and once again he reminded himself how old and frail he was compared to his quarry.
This is downright stupid, Virgil.
Doris’s voice in his head had the self-righteous attitude to it that she took when he was doing something particularly bullheaded. But she knew as well as he did that he couldn’t allow Jimmy Torrio to sneak up on Jake. His plan—if this fiasco could be called a plan—was now more about warning Jake than trying to catch Jimmy out here in the woods. He knew that he might well get killed attempting even that, but at least he was going to try.
When he reached the road, the forest that had seemed so threatening only moments before turned into a comforting cover that he was reluctant to leave. He tried skirting the lane through the trees, but eventually he realized that he was going to make more noise that way, and take far too long getting to Jake. If Jimmy did know the layout of the valley now—and he wasn’t lying in wait back at Mandi’s—then he probably wasn’t wasting his time prowling through the forest. Virgil crept out onto the slimy gravel lane, wiping rain out of his eyes with the back of his sleeve.
But when he reached the bottom of Albert’s driveway he had to make a decision.
Would Jimmy head straight for Pam and Ernie’s? Or would he take the first driveway in hope of finding clothes and maybe a weapon? If he was up at Albert’s, would Virgil be better off following him—maybe surprising him—or should he hurry on to Pam’s place to warn Jake?
Damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. Virgil tossed the mental coin even though he already knew how it was going to fall and started up Albert’s drive.
HE CAR SPUTTERED AND COUGHED but wouldn’t fire. Jake slapped the dash and cursed. He didn’t know if the engine was choked with water or whether he’d simply flooded it, but they wouldn’t be driving anywhere now.
“Maybe if you pumped the gas,” said Mandi. “Sometimes my car—”
“I tried that.”
Mandi was wedged into the passenger seat with Pierce, who’d refused to leave her side to ride in the back. Pierce signed into Mandi’s hand, and she signed back as Jake tried the starter again. But the battery was wearing down, and before it could die altogether he turned the key off.
“Pierce thinks maybe he can fix it,” said Mandi.
“What?”
She shrugged. “I told you. He has this talent for repairing things. Electric motors, televisions. I know it sounds crazy. But he does. He wants to feel the motor.”
Jake sighed. The boy had led them closer to the car. But Jake had to figure that was luck. “Mandi, I don’t even have any tools—”
“It can’t hurt to let him touch the motor.”
Jake shook his head, but he found the release lever and popped the hood. Pierce followed the fender around to lean in and slip his hands over the engine. Jake stood in the rain beside Mandi.
“This is crazy.”
She frowned. “Just give him a chance. We wouldn’t have gotten out of the woods without him.”
Jake still wasn’t so sure that was true. And, even if it was, fixing a stalled engine with bare hands was something else altogether. He leaned beside Pierce, studying the boy by the light that shone from the car’s interior. The kid really did look as though he expected to repair the motor, running quick fingers along the spark plug wires, unplugging and replugging them, his face tight with concentration. Finally the boy stood, and when Mandi touched him to let him know she was there he signed to her.
“He says to give it a try.”
Jake shrugged, climbing behind the wheel. He twisted the key, and the car coughed but started.
“I’ll be damned,” he muttered. Mandi slammed the hood, and she and Pierce climbed back into the car.
But Jake noticed the boy still seemed to be staring out into the woods. Mandi took the boy’s hand and signed. Pierce signed back, and Mandi frowned.
“What’d he say?” asked Jake.
“He said he can almost understand what the whispers are saying.”
Jake managed to get the big sedan turned around without depositing them in the ditch, and they chugged their way back through all the washouts, finally plowing up Pam’s driveway. Jake rocked back and forth for encouragement, patting the dash.
“Come on, old girl. Just a few more yards.”
When they rounded the last corner to the house they could see candles in the windows.
Cramer stepped out onto the porch and waved them up. “I was about to call the Coast Guard to come get you guys,” he said as the three of them splashed up the steps. “You people look like something the cat dragged to the dump.”
“It’s a long story,” said Jake, shivering. “I’ll tell
you all about it as soon as we get into some dry clothes.”
“Everybody okay?”
“Yeah,” said Jake, eyeing first Mandi, then Pierce. “We’re all gonna make it. Hope you’ve been keeping Barbara entertained.”
“I was about to kill her. But then she passed out again.”
The old woman was sitting bolt upright on the sofa in front of the fireplace, snoring loudly.
“Seems to like the heat,” said Cramer. “I been thinking about setting her on fire.”
Jake showed Mandi and Pierce to the downstairs bath, leaving them with a candle. “The water’s out with the pump off. But there’s towels, and I’m sure I can find you something to wear.”
“Don’t bother,” said Mandi. “I’ll do it. You need to get dried off yourself.”
Jake grabbed a couple of towels and headed upstairs to his bedroom. But he couldn’t seem to get dry or warm. It was as though the rain had found cracks and crevices in his body that even the towels couldn’t discover. He finally put on clothes again and wandered downstairs in his socked feet.
Standing in front of the roaring fireplace, he let the flames bake the chill and exhaustion out of his joints.
“Mandi and Pierce still in the bathroom?” he asked Cramer.
Cramer nodded. “What happened to you guys?”
Jake gave him the whole story.
“How did Pierce know which way to go?” asked Cramer.
Jake shrugged. “At first it was because he said he could hear that thing. After that he still led us in the right direction. But fixing the car was the weirdest thing.”
“That could have been a coincidence, too.”
Jake shrugged, backing closer to the fire.
“Barbara told me the whole Crowley family was famous for being nuts,” said Cramer.
Jake frowned. “That’s the way she put it?”
“Pretty much. She said every male Crowley since the first Jacob Crowley has gone crazy. She said every one of them lived in the same house, up at the head of the valley. Right up to you and your father.”
“My great-grandfather and my grandfather both ended up institutionalized.”
“What happened to your dad after the killing?”
Jake stared hard into the fire for a long time. “He disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
Jake nodded. “I think he drowned . . . I hope for his sake he did.”
“Now you’re last in the Crowley line.”
“Looks like it.”
“Ever feel yourself getting a little strange?”
“Just when I’m around you.”
“Seriously.”
Jake hesitated. “There have been times . . . when I thought maybe I was crazy.”
“What were your grandfather and great-grandfather locked up for?”
“For seeing things, I think.”
“The shadows.”
Jake shook his head. “I never heard the whole story. But I wonder if that wasn’t the case.”
“Which would make them maybe not so crazy.”
“Maybe.”
Just then Mandi and Pierce returned, both wrapped in blankets.
“We were discussing Jake’s nutty family,” said Cramer.
Mandi aimed Pierce at a seat beside Barbara on the couch. The boy managed to slide into place without waking the old woman. “Does that thing out there have anything to do with the secret you and Pam have kept all these years?” she asked Jake.
Jake flushed.
“You never told me what happened the night your mother was killed. But ever since your mother’s death I’ve known that you and Pam shared something about that night. Something more than just her murder. Virgil knew it, too. If it has something to do with what’s going on, then we have a right to know.”
“What really happened to your father?” asked Cramer.
Barbara stirred but didn’t wake. The old woman’s shallow breathing sounded as loud as a thunderclap in the room’s sudden silence.
Jake frowned. “That was when I heard the whispers for the first time.”
The lights of the old house had been burning brightly on that moonlit night. He crept out of the woods in a trance, following the weird sounds and his mother’s screams. As he passed the little stone chapel in the backyard, he noticed that the door was open. He’d never seen it unlocked before, never actually been allowed inside. But that night his mother’s screams were far more compelling than a small boy’s curiosity.
“Mother?” he called quietly as he climbed the back stoop.
He slipped through the creaking screen door and into the kitchen. The table was overturned, and broken dishes lay scattered across the floor and the counter. The refrigerator door stood ajar, and Jake closed it quietly.
“Mother?” he called again.
The eerie whispering hissed all around him like a leaking gas line.
He stumbled from room to room, stepping carefully around broken shards of pottery and splintered glass from picture frames littering the hardwood floor. Taking catlike steps up the long staircase, he found his mother sprawled across an old throw rug in the hall. Her head rested against an antique end table, blood swathing her face, head, and bare shoulders. He ran to her, dropping onto the floor, raising her head gently into his lap, terrified that she would be cold, dead, already gone. But she was still alive.
Barely.
She clutched his wrist with a feeble hand and shook her head. “Run away, Jake,” she whispered.
“So she was alive when you found her?” asked Cramer.
Jake nodded.
“And that’s all she said? ‘Run away, Jake’?”
“Yes.”
“What happened then?”
“Just after she died in my arms, my father showed up. He went crazy. Crying, pulling his hair out. He kept asking her what she’d done, like it was her fault somehow that she was dead.”
A sudden spark of memory tingled, and he frowned.
“What?” said Cramer.
Jake shook his head. “I seem to remember him taking something out of her hand.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t remember if I even got a look at it. Maybe I’m just imagining. It was only moments later that we heard the whispers again, and my father lifted me to my feet and shoved me toward the stairs. And he shouted the same thing my mother had said.”
“‘Run away, Jake,’ “whispered Mandi.
Jake nodded. “I didn’t want to go. I was terrified. But he dragged me down the stairs as the noise got louder. He pushed me through the front door and down the front steps, pointing to the trees. Screaming at me all the time.”
“And you ran,” said Cramer.
“Into the forest. And when I heard someone crashing after me, and heard the whispers, I really ran. I lost my direction, and I ended up running right off the cliff into the swimming hole. I thought I was going to drown. When I bobbed to the surface I saw someone falling toward me, and I backpedaled. But it was my father. He swam to me, shoving me toward the rapids. And all the time I was trying to cling to him. But then something dark dropped over both of us, and I was pushed underwater. I really was drowning then. I think maybe I passed out. When I came to I was alone, on my back in the dark, floating downstream. And I was already past the rapids. I dragged myself to shore, and I huddled in the dark, scared shitless, until dawn. Then I followed the stream back to a small trail I knew and crept back to the house.
“There were cop cars everywhere, and when Virgil spotted me, he dragged me aside, bundled me in a blanket, and took me into a bedroom to talk. But after listening to my story three or four times, he told me to just say that I’d heard screams and hid in the woods. He told me to never tell anyone else what I’d told him. Later I confided the truth to Pam, and ever since I wished I hadn’t.”
“And your dad?”
“Never found.”
“Know what a good shrink would say about that story?” said Cramer, shaking his head.
>
“That’s why I don’t talk to many shrinks,” said Jake. “What do you think of it?”
“Up to a day or two ago I would have agreed with the shrinks.”
“And now?”
Cramer shrugged. “So everyone thought your father went crazy and killed your mother. The Crowley curse again. But what started all the killing? What set that thing off? What do you know about your great-great-grandfather?”
“Jacob Crowley fought at Gettysburg, with distinction if you can believe the stories. He moved into the valley because it was about as remote as he could get and still stay in the States. He ended up marrying an Indian woman. Jacob and his family started out living at the mouth of the valley on a small farm, but it was washed out by a flood, and when their kids were mostly grown he and Weasel—that was his wife’s Indian name—moved up to the head of the valley where Jacob and the kids built a large house for the family. He was killed along with Weasel and two of the kids still living at home.”
“After they moved into the house up the valley,” mused Cramer. “How was he killed?”
“According to the story there was another terrible flood, and during it Jacob murdered Weasel and one of the kids. Then for some unknown reason he tried to save one of the surviving children that had been sucked into the water, and he got swept away himself, and was never found.”
“Floods seem to be a bad habit around here. Didn’t your mother’s death ever make you wonder about that story?”
Jake frowned. “Yeah. About that and other stories. But after a few years it seemed more likely that I really was crazy. That I had been seeing things and imagining them, covering up for a murder my father really did commit. That had me pretty conflicted.”
“Your baggage,” said Cramer, nodding. “Where did the old man get the money to build a big house away up here in the mountains?”
“Logging, mostly. Later he sold land. But the majority of the valley is still owned by the family.”
“By you,” said Mandi.
Cramer stared at Jake. “You own this valley?”
Jake shrugged. “A few thousand acres.”
“Holy shit. I was just kidding about you being the King of Crowley.”
In Shadows Page 21
