Conway put up a hand as Peter approached him. “Can’t go through this way.”
“I need to get some information,” Peter said.
“Yeah, you and everyone else,” Conway said, not making eye contact. “Get back in the crowd. You can’t come through here.”
“I’m not trying to go through.”
“Good, then step back.”
“What’s the matter with you? My wife—”
“The matter is”—Conway gave him his eyes—“we can’t do our job when people keep trying come up here. It’s dangerous. And nobody seems to know what the hell caused the explosion to begin with. So I’ll say it again… step back.”
“Listen, you son of a bitch, my wife was in there. I’m not trying to get by you. I’m trying to find out where she is. If you can’t help me, then tell me who can, and I’ll talk to them.”
“What’d you call me?” Conway’s face had turned a hard shade of red, and his jaw seemed to have somehow grown squarer.
“I’m just trying to figure out where the fuck I start,” Peter said. “Jesus H. Christ! You don’t have to act like such a stupid asshole.” He could feel people starting to look at him.
Let them, he thought.
“That’s it.” Conway unfolded his arms, stepping forward.
Peter backpedaled as Conway came toward him. But Conway reached out, grabbed the front of Peter’s shirt, and pushed him up against the brick wall. “Come on. Get your hands off me.”
“You need to learn some manners, pal. You’re lucky I don’t throw you in the back of my cruiser and let you cool off. I told you to get back. What didn’t you understand about that?”
Peter showed the palms of his hands. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Please, I just want to know if my wife is one of the survivors they took to Worcester or Boston. That’s all I’m after.”
A spiteful look washed over Conway’s face, and the corner of his mouth gave a little upward curl. “Survivors? There ain’t nothing but body parts in there.”
Something inside Peter popped. He shoved Conway as hard as he could, his back pressed against the wall for leverage. Then he stepped forward and punched the man square in the jaw. Conway’s head snapped back, but he stayed on his feet. His hand went to his face. He worked his jaw back and forth a few times, then spat blood on the ground.
Peter stood there, frozen. What the hell had he just done? He had never hit someone before—way to pop your cherry on a cop, an internal voice said—and the impact hurt his hand more than he had thought it would. “Hey, look, I shouldn’t’ve done—”
“You stupid moron.” Conway started toward him again, fists clenched.
“What the hell is going on over here?” someone yelled.
Both Peter and Conway looked in the same direction. An older trooper with a stocky build was heading over to them. He didn’t look amused. This was exactly the type of goddamned thing this guy didn’t have time to deal with.
Conway’s demeanor tempered—beta in the presence of alpha. “This guy struck me, Sarge.”
“That true?” the older trooper asked Peter.
“I did,” Peter said.
The older trooper looked at Conway. “Well, what the hell you do to piss him off?”
“Nothing. He was trying to get through. You told me to keep everyone—”
“I wasn’t trying to get through. How many times do I have to say that?” Peter said. Then to the older trooper: “My wife was in the church when it… Look, I’m just trying to find out where she might be. Jesus, I don’t even know if she’s alive.”
But he did know. And the answer was: she wasn’t. He was just going through the motions, waiting to be told what he already knew. A strange memory hit him, one he had all but forgotten. He was ten, hiding in the closet in his parents’ bedroom. They were discussing Christmas, and his father was telling his mother that it was time to stop the Santa Claus charade. The boy was getting too old, and it was time they started taking some of the credit for the toys. Goddammit, they paid for them, not some fat make-believe asshole! Since the first grade Peter had suspected Santa Clause wasn’t real, but he had held on to the idea as long as he could, until he had heard it from his own parents’ lips. Life had just seemed better that way.
The older trooper sighed. “Okay. Trooper Conway, why don’t you leave us alone. Keep doing what I told you to do, just try not to do it in such a way that makes people want to knock your block off.”
“Sarge—”
“Go. Now. I won’t tell you twice.”
“Yes, sir.” Conway gave Peter a cold look and then walked away, holding his jaw, his tongue working the inside of his cheek.
“I’m Sergeant Babineaux. Let’s step over here a moment.” They moved from the street to the sidewalk, away from the crowd. A good many were still watching them, curious about the fight that had nearly broken out. “We’ll just pretend this never happened, okay? Given the circumstances I’m going to assume Trooper Conway had it coming. He usually does. Unfortunately, his attitude is bigger than his brain. You all right?”
“I’m fine,” Peter said.
“You said your wife was in the church?”
“Yes.” Peter pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head, once again holding back an urge to break down and start sobbing. “What the hell happened?”
“Well, that’s what we’re trying to find out. All we know at the moment is that there are a lot of casualties.”
“I was taken to the hospital,” Peter said. “I was outside when it happened. But the staff at Gilchrist County said that people were being taken to Worcester and Boston. Is that true?”
“A few people were, yes.” Babineaux ran a hand across his mouth. “But they weren’t inside the church when it went off. My guess was that they were outside, like you… probably a little worse off. This whole thing is a mess at the moment. It’s going to take some time to sort it out.”
“What about them?” Peter pointed to the bodies covered by sheets. “What if one of those…? Shouldn’t I try to identify her?”
“What’s your name?”
“Peter… Martell.”
Babineaux put his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “Peter, if one of those is your wife, you don’t want to see under that sheet. Whatever did this, it was a heck of a blast.”
Peter nodded. His eyes were starting to blur. It was hard to tell if it was rain or tears. He supposed it didn’t matter.
“If you want my advice,” Babineaux said, “go home and get some rest. If your wife’s alive in there, we’ll find her, and there will be a record of where she’s taken. But standing out here in the rain and waiting for us to pull a body from the rubble isn’t going to do you any good. That’s as hard to say as I’m sure it is to hear.” Babineaux crossed his arms. “Now, can you listen to that? Or am I going to regret overlooking the fact that you assaulted a member of law enforcement?”
“I lost my head. I’m sorry,” Peter said. “I just…” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
“I know,” Babineaux said, and patted Peter on the arm. “Just hang in there.”
Then he went around Peter and disappeared back into the commotion. Peter stood on the sidewalk a moment. At some point he looked down. Among the broken glass was a maroon pool of blood. He was standing directly where he had been when the explosion had knocked him off his feet. The pool of blood, he suspected, belonged to Chief Delancey. One of his last fuzzy thoughts before he had blacked out had been of a head wound. A long slice in the shape of a frown.
Peter headed up the street, hands in his pockets, head down. His clothes were wet, feet damp, and even though it wasn’t cold, he shivered. It was a windless afternoon, made mean, tall, and deep by death. He didn’t know where he was heading. Then he did. He hadn’t even meant to go that way. He was walking in the direction of his car, which was still parked on the street where he’d left it earlier that afternoon. His brain was completing a forgotten circuit.
They had
parked at least a hundred feet from Our Savior Lutheran on the opposite side of the street. The Dodge was clear of the crowds of people. A long spider crack ran the length of the windshield, and pieces of brick were scattered across his hood and roof.
Peter didn’t care. He opened the door and got in. The keys were still in his pocket. So much was where it should be, yet so much was lost, out of place. He started the car and turned on the windshield wipers. They scraped debris across his windshield in a strained sweep, leaving muddy, clay-colored streaks on the glass.
He looked across the seat, listening to the squeal of the wipers. The rain drummed on the roof. Sylvia’s hair elastics were where they always were—on the door handle. Peter brought his hands to his face and started to cry.
8
Returning to Shady Cove without Sylvia might have been the hardest thing Peter had ever had to do. Cradling his dead son’s lifeless body in his arms had been bad, but losing Sylvia was worse. When Noah died, at least he hadn’t been alone to face it. He felt a vague sort of guilt for even thinking it, but he and Sylvia had both borne that grief, its weight distributed evenly between them. They had suffered together, and there had been something less tragic about that awful bond they shared.
This time, though, it would be only him looking into the sinking void, and he wasn’t so sure he wanted to face that alone. What was the point? To prove his mettle? To whom? To what? He was tired of staying strong. He had seen enough of this world, especially in Gilchrist, to know there was no God. Not the kind that people believed in and leaned on for strength. Not the kind that traded in faith. What existed out there wasn’t a benevolent, just, or compassionate creator. It was a cruel, greedy manipulator that cared for nothing except its own thirst.
And he didn’t want to feed it. He didn’t want to feel what he was feeling because he knew that those emotions were precisely what it wanted. The series of subtle—and not so subtle—manipulations had all been designed to bring him to Gilchrist and march him toward tragedy. This town had probably been suffering the consequences of its own nature forever, and for whatever reason, his life had been caught in its undertow and dragged down. Just another meal. He supposed this sort of thing happened every day, all over the world. Whatever people called it—bad luck, tragedy, evil—it was all the same. Never random, never without reason.
But he was done with it. Done with all of it. If there was one thing he had learned to do over the last few years, it was how to avoid feelings. He and Sylvia had practically become professionals in that arena. And if anything was going to drink up his misery, it would be him.
He sat down at the table and set the bottle of vodka in front of him. He had purchased it on his dazed drive back to Shady Cove. He hadn’t been planning to drink—the thought hadn’t even touched his mind as his world began to fall apart before his eyes—but then he had spotted the liquor store and realized that maybe he had been planning his next drink his whole life.
He looked around the kitchen of Shady Cove, blinking slowly. Nothing had definition anymore. It was all muted and fuzzy. Except one thing. The bottle of Rolaids was still on the counter. He sniffed, his smile faint. The last thing they had shared was a bad case of heartburn. But at least it had been brought on by a good night of honest-to-goodness fun—a night of dancing, laughing, and making love. They had created a good memory, and he wondered if he would get to maybe see that again one day. Was there a negative of it stored somewhere in that basement dimension, waiting to be watched? He hoped so.
He closed his eyes, uncapped the bottle, and downed a third of it in one long drink. The Darvocet had kicked in, and he was already riding that dull wave of loopy warmth. But the immediate effect of the alcohol was a welcome addition. He hadn’t taken a drink in almost a week, but it all came flooding back, like seeing an old friend whose company he had forgotten he enjoyed so thoroughly. He took another long swig and sat in the silence of Shady Cove, listening to the duck clock tick and tock, letting the sharp corners of his pain be rounded down as the liquor went to work on him.
After a few minutes—it could’ve been an hour; he couldn’t be sure—an idea came to him, irrational yet totally perfect. He stood, wobbled, steadied himself on the back of a chair, then made his way into the bathroom. He opened the drawer and reached all the way back. It took him a second, but eventually he found the bottle of Equanil he had hidden behind the first-aid kit. He swallowed five, after chewing them first, and washed it all down with more vodka. The bottle was already half gone. He didn’t know if his intention was to kill himself, or if he just wanted to feel closer to Sylvia in some strange way. Maybe if he could align with her past state of mind, try to put himself in her shoes, he could grasp one final glimpse of her, somehow preserve her inside him. It was hard to say for sure. His mind was on sideways, sliding down the embankment into the void. His thoughts were clumsy, tumbling wooden blocks.
He looked down at the knuckles of his right hand. They were black and blue from socking that arrogant cop. He opened and closed his hand. He liked the way it felt: sore and tight, like it was made of rubber. In fact, he had liked the way all of it had felt—the quick building anger that had erupted in an indelible act of violence. He wasn’t a violent man, had never even punched someone before, but the pained look of surprise on the trooper’s face had been satisfying. It said: I didn’t see who you truly were, but now I do.
Peter took another drink and set the bottle on the back of the toilet. He glanced up and looked at himself in the mirror. The side of his face was covered in thin scratches he had no recollection of receiving. “Look at me now,” he said, and grinned. “Where d’we go from here, my friend? Where d’we go?” His speech was starting to slow and slur.
He punched the mirror. It spiderwebbed, and a few jagged pieces fell into the sink. He laughed madly. Outside himself, looking down, he saw a stranger, but the smile on his face fled as the cabinet door swung open slowly. He saw the bottle of antacids, the bottle he had been unable to find that morning. The Rolaids were sitting on the cabinet shelf, exactly where they should’ve been. Still, he was certain they hadn’t been there this morning. He had checked twice.
He stared at them for a long time. And in another quick act of uncharacteristic aggression, he grabbed the sides of the medicine cabinet, tore it off the wall, and threw it into the tub. Tears ran hot down his cheeks, but he wasn’t crying.
A thin pain issued from his palm. He looked down, eyes bleary. A long cut stretched from the base of his thumb to the base of his pinky. He looked at it, seeing it but not really understanding it. He must’ve cut it on the medicine cabinet. He wiped it on his pants, then wrapped a hand towel around it.
Silvery stars and clouds floated across his vision. His head was spinning. The booze was working. The drugs were working.
He stumbled into the bedroom and found his wife’s suitcase. It was still full of clothes she hadn’t unpacked. He picked it up and dumped it out on the bed, pushing it all to the side where she had slept. Then he lay down beside it. It smelled of her perfume. But it was more than that. It smelled of her life. He buried his face in it, held it tightly, and wept, until dizzying blackness fell over him and carried him off.
Chapter Fifteen
OUT IN THE WOODS
1
It was ten past eleven on Wednesday night when Corbin knocked on the door of Shady Cove.
“Mr. Martell? Peter… are you in there? It’s Chief Delancey.” He softened his tone. “It’s Corbin.”
No response. He knocked again, harder.
“Maybe he isn’t home,” Benny said, leaning from the passenger’s seat of Corbin’s pickup truck.
Corbin’s cruiser had been parked in the church’s back parking lot and was demolished by large pieces of flying debris. His head had suffered similar injuries, but he had been far luckier. Thirty-six stitches and a bottle of pain medication had fixed him up well enough to be out at Big Bath, looking for a man who may or may not know something about his missing daugh
ter. Just a couple hours ago, firemen had pulled Meryl’s body from the wreckage and Corbin had identified her. It hadn’t been pretty. His wife was dead, and he would have to face that soon enough. But his little girl might still be out there somewhere, and the time to grieve would have to come later. If there was a chance of finding Grace, he had to take it. The nurse at Gilchrist County Hospital, where Corbin had been treated, had told him Peter Martell was brought in around the same time he was and left on his own in a cab. Two ships passing in the night. But at least Corbin knew the guy was still alive.
“His car’s here,” Corbin said over his shoulder. He tried the door and it opened. “Stay here.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Corbin went inside. The lights were all off. Somewhere in the dark, a clock ticked off seconds.
“Hello. Anybody home?”
Deep silence.
He made his way up a hallway and stopped at the first doorway on his left. His eyes weren’t adjusted, and it was too dark to see anything but rough shadows. He reached his hand through the doorway, felt around on the wall, and found a light switch. He flicked it up. The bathroom light came on overhead. There were shards of mirror glass in the sink. The medicine cabinet was in the tub. Dime-sized spots of blood dotted the floor. A brownish handprint was smeared on the wall beside the towel rack. A half-empty bottle of vodka sat on the back of the toilet tank.
“Jesus. What the hell happened here?” he said under his breath. He had a feeling he knew, though; the scene echoed in his own heart.
He left the light on and continued up the short hall, his faint shadow stretched out ahead of him. The next doorway opened to a bedroom. In the dim light, he could see someone curled up in the fetal position on a bed, back facing the room. The bed was covered in clothes.
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