The Runes of the Earth

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “Are you all right?” Linden asked quickly.

  “I had a feeling—” Sandy began, then stopped herself to attempt an unconvincing smile. “Whatever bothered you today must be catching. It came on me while I was driving home. I couldn’t relax—” She smiled again, more successfully this time. “I knew you were going to call. I already had my coat on when the phone rang.” Then her expression resumed its indefinite distress. “I hope nothing bad has happened.”

  “I’ll let you know,” Linden replied to avoid explanations. “I’ll call as soon as I can.”

  Sandy nodded. She appeared to be listening to the wind rather than to Linden.

  Still shivering, Linden took her own coat from the entryway closet, belted it around her, and impelled herself out into the night.

  When she had pulled the door closed after her, however, she paused where she was until she heard the lock click home. She could not imagine what had unsettled Sandy’s usual phlegmatic calm, but she was fiercely glad of it. Scared, Sandy would be particularly cautious; and Linden desired every scrap of care which Sandy could provide for Jeremiah.

  She needed that reassurance to help her bear the inchoate conviction that she was abandoning her son. She yearned to flee with him now, take him and run—

  Surely Roger was unaware that she had a son?

  She had to close her mouth and squint her eyes against the grit in the wind. Clutching her resolve around her like another coat, she forced herself to hasten down off the porch and across the lawn to her car.

  A hard gust nearly tore the car door from her hand as she pulled it open. She stumbled into the driver’s seat as if she had been shoved. The door resisted her tug for an instant, then slammed shut after her. At the impact, the car staggered on its springs.

  The starter ground briefly before the engine came to life. With as much caution as she could muster, she backed out into the street and turned toward the hospital.

  For a block or two, the wind left her alone. Then it staggered the car again, whining in the wheel wells, striking the hood and trunk until they vibrated. The street lamps lit dark streaks in the air like handfuls of dust thrown along the leading edge of a gale. They swirled when they hit the car, curled momentarily on the windscreen, danced away.

  Fortunately Berenford Memorial was not far. And street lamps were more common in the center of town: they seemed brighter. Nevertheless dust tainted the air in swift plumes and streamers, scattering into turbulence at the edges of the buildings. Scraps of paper twisted like tortured things in the eddies.

  Past the bulk of County Hospital, she wheeled into the parking lot between it and Berenford Memorial. From the lot she could not see the front door. But three patrol cars had reached her domain ahead of her. Their lights flashed empty warnings into the night.

  Blinking hard at the dust, and at the wind’s raw chill, she hugged her coat around her and hastened along the walk toward the front door. She could have used the staff entrance and saved herself thirty yards, but she wanted to enter the building as Roger must have entered it, see the sequence of what he had done.

  Around the corner of the building and along its front she hurried. The front steps she took two at a time, nearly running.

  Lit by the lights from the small reception lobby, as well as by its own lamps, the outer door seemed to appear in front of her as if it had been swept into existence from some other reality. She was reaching for its handle when she saw the ugly hole torn in the metal where the lock had been. From the hole, cracks spread crookedly through the glass.

  Berenford Memorial’s entrance had two sets of heavy glass doors, one inside the other. At night the outer door was kept locked. The people who worked here used the staff entrance and their own keys. Visitors after dark had to ring a doorbell which summoned the duty nurse or an orderly; and they were not admitted until they had introduced themselves over the intercom by the door.

  Apparently someone had refused to let Roger in.

  Sara Clint was the duty nurse: who were the orderlies? For a moment, distracted by Roger’s violence, Linden could not remember. Then she did: Avis Cardaman and Harry Gund. Harry would have been useless against an intruder. He was a freckle-faced young man with an ingratiating demeanor and a positive genius for paperwork; but he tended to flinch whenever he heard a loud voice. Avis, however, was a huge and compulsively responsible man whose gentle manner concealed his prodigious strength. Linden had often suspected that he could have intimidated the paint off the walls, if he had considered it a threat to his patients.

  If Roger had taken Joan in spite of Avis—

  How many other casualties had he left in his wake?

  Snatching a quick breath for courage, she heaved open the outer door, then the inner, and strode into the lobby.

  The space was crowded with police officers: Sheriff Lytton and at least six of his deputies. They all looked toward her as she entered.

  Behind them, Harry Gund attended the reception desk. His manner seemed at once frightened and defiant, as if he had shamed himself in some way, and now sought to make amends with a display of attention to duty. Near him stood Maxine Dubroff and her husband, Ernie, their arms around each other.

  In a rush, Linden scanned the lobby past the shoulders of the officers, but she saw no sign of Sara Clint.

  Helplessly she wondered how her patients were reacting to gunshots and turmoil.

  Just inside the door, nearly at her feet, Bill Coty sprawled in his life’s blood. He still wore his navy-blue Security uniform, with his walkie-talkie and his nightstick attached to his belt. A splash of blood obscured the useless silver of his badge. But a small holster at his belt was empty.

  In one slack hand, he held a can of Mace: the only real weapon sanctioned by County Hospital’s insurance. Apparently Roger had not given him time to use it.

  Strands of his white hair showed through the wreckage of his head. Roger’s bullet had smashed in his left temple. The exit wound in the back of his skull was an atrocity of brains and bone. A dark trickle across his cheek underscored the dismay in his sightless eyes.

  Instinctively Linden dropped to her knees beside him; reached out as if she believed that the touch of her hands would somehow bring him back to life. But the sheriff stopped her.

  “Don’t touch him!” Lytton barked. “Forensics hasn’t been here yet.”

  As if there could be any doubt about the cause of death.

  Briefly Linden covered her face as if she could not bear the sight of Bill’s lifeless form. Almost at once, however, she dropped her hands; and as she did so her trembling fell away as if one aspect of her ordinary mortality had sloughed from her. The crisis was upon her now: it smelled of copper and ashes. Grimly she rose to her feet to meet it.

  Bill had been shot so long ago that most of his blood had already dried. How much time had passed? Half an hour? An hour?

  How much of a head start did Roger have?

  “Dr. Avery,” growled Barton Lytton when she faced him. “It’s about time.”

  He was a blunt, fleshy man with a gift for seeming bigger than he actually was. In fact, he stood no taller than Linden herself; yet he appeared to loom over her. No doubt that contributed to his incessant reelection: people thought of him as dominant, effective, despite his real stature. Typically he wore mirrored aviator sunglasses, but now they were shoved into the breast pocket of his khaki shirt opposite his badge. Various heavy objects dragged at his belt—a radio, a cell phone, handcuffs, Mace, a handgun the size of a tinker’s anvil, spare clips—making his paunch appear larger than it was.

  “I—” Linden began. She wanted to say, I tried to warn you. But the look in his eyes, haunted and raging, closed her throat. They were the eyes of a man in trouble, out of his depth, with no one to blame but himself. Roughly she swallowed some of her anger. “I came as soon as I could.”

  “Dr. Avery!” When she spoke, Harry Gund left the reception desk to push his way through the clustered officers. “Thank God yo
u’re here. I’ve done everything I can, but we need you.

  “This is real bad, Dr. Avery,” he told her earnestly.

  “Harry,” Lytton muttered: a warning.

  Harry ignored the sheriff. Ordinarily he was deferential in the face of authority; but now his need to exonerate himself overshadowed his timidity.

  “We couldn’t stop him.” His voice trembled with the aftereffects of dismay and shock. “We tried—Avis and me—but we couldn’t. I didn’t let him in. He rang the doorbell, used the intercom. He was smiling, and he sounded just as reasonable as could be. But I remembered your orders”—which he must have heard from Sara—“and didn’t let him in.”

  “Harry,” Sheriff Lytton rasped again. He reached out a thick hand to silence the orderly.

  Linden interrupted the sheriff. “He was here. You weren’t. Let him tell it.”

  Lytton dropped his hand. His shoulders appeared to slump as if she had made him smaller.

  A moment of gratitude flashed in Harry’s eyes.

  “I tried to stop him,” he repeated. “But he had this gun, this huge gun. He shot the lock.

  “I yelled for help. Then I tried to get behind the desk so I could use the phone. But he pointed his gun at me. If I did anything, he was going to shoot me.

  “He kept smiling like we’re friends or something.”

  Linden listened carefully, setting her own thoughts and her secret knowledge aside. Roger had to be stopped. He’s in my mind, Joan had once told Thomas Covenant, and I can’t get him out. He hates you.

  “Then Bill Coty came in.” Harry’s tension mounted as he continued. “He wasn’t supposed to be here. He’s off duty, isn’t he? But he had his Mace, and he held it up like it could stop bullets. He told him to put the gun down.”

  The harm that Roger could do was incalculable.

  “Avis was there,” Harry said, trembling now. “And Mrs. Clint. They must’ve heard me yelling.” Or the sound of Roger’s handgun. “Avis wanted to do something, you know what he’s like, but she made him stay where he was.

  “Bill was scared, you could see that, but he kept telling him to put the gun down, put the gun down. He just smiled and smiled, and I thought he wasn’t going to do anything, but all at once he pointed the gun at Bill and fired, and Bill went down like someone kicked him in the head.”

  Linden closed her eyes slowly, held them shut for a moment to contain her regret. She had told Bill that Roger was not dangerous.

  Harry was saying, “That’s when Avis ran at him, even though Mrs. Clint was yelling at him to stop. Avis tried to tackle him, but he just turned and hit him with the gun, hit him so hard his head bounced.”

  Deliberately she opened her eyes again.

  Behind Harry, Sheriff Lytton waited with badly concealed impatience. His officers listened as if they were stunned, although they must have heard Harry’s story earlier.

  Where had Roger acquired such murderous skills?

  “Avis fell down,” Harry said, shaking. “He had blood all over him.

  “Then he wasn’t here anymore. I didn’t even see where he went, but he took Mrs. Clint with him. He made her go.

  “I called the sheriff right away, right away. I was going to call you, too, but I had to take care of Avis.”

  Belatedly Linden noticed another pool of blood off to the side of Bill’s body. Drying smears marked the front and sleeves of Harry’s pale-green orderly’s uniform. He must have taken Avis’ head in his arms, cradled the big man like a brother.

  “He kept bleeding—” Harry’s voice shivered on the verge of hysteria. “I couldn’t make it stop. I called Emergency, I told them stat, Avis was dying, I couldn’t look at Bill but I thought he was already dead.

  “I did everything I could, Doctor.” His eyes implored Linden to tell him that he was not to blame. “Honest, I did.”

  His appeal touched her, but she had no room for it.

  At the back of the lobby, Maxine released herself from Ernie’s arms. Moving between the silent officers, she came forward to stand beside Harry, place a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Her kind face regarded him sadly.

  The officers began to shift their feet and look around as if they were rousing themselves from a trance.

  “Dr. Panger has Avis in surgery,” Maxine told Linden. “He may have bone splinters in his brain.”

  Linden nodded an acknowledgment—Curt Panger was more than competent—but she was not done with Harry. “Did you see him leave?” she asked quietly.

  “Oh, yes,” Harry answered. “Right after I called Emergency. He had Joan, and Mrs. Clint. Joan went with him like she wanted to go, but he had to keep his gun pointed at Mrs. Clint. I hid behind the desk so he didn’t see me.”

  Lytton cleared his throat fiercely. “He has a hostage, Dr. Avery.” His voice seemed to grate against his teeth. “We’re wasting time here. I need to talk to you.”

  Linden turned her attention to him at last. “And I need to talk to you.” The fact that Roger had taken a hostage meant that he was not finished yet. If he had simply wanted his mother, a hostage would only slow him down.

  He intended more harm.

  Sara Clint was a good nurse, levelheaded and compassionate. She had a husband and two daughters. She did not deserve this.

  Joan herself did not deserve it.

  “Fine,” Lytton growled. “So tell me just how the hell you knew this was going to happen.”

  “Not here,” Linden countered. “In my office.” He was more likely to tell her the truth if they were alone.

  Stifling an impulse to hurry, she took a moment to ask Maxine to call for a nurse to replace Sara. She did not want to leave Harry on duty alone in his condition. Then she beckoned for the sheriff to follow her and headed toward her office.

  His heavy boots stamped behind her on the tile as if he were cursing.

  In her office, she sat down behind her desk, anchoring herself on her medical authority. She wanted Barton Lytton to know that she was not a woman whom he could intimidate.

  He began at once. Towering at the edge of her desk, he announced in a rough voice, “I need to know what you know. We have to find that little shit.” He glowered down at her as if she could free him to act on his outrage and frustration. “He sure as hell won’t take her to Haven Farm. Not unless he’s begging to get caught. The Clints are decent people. I’m not going to let him get away with this.

  “Tell me now, Doctor. How the fuck did you know what he would do?”

  The sheriff was wrong. Roger expected to be caught; wanted that for some reason. Why else did he need a hostage?

  “I knew,” she retorted firmly, “because I pay attention.” The haunted ire and need in his eyes had not changed, but now it did not sway her. “I could see as soon as I met him that he was unstable. He kept repeating that he wanted to take care of Joan, but his manner was all wrong. He didn’t act like a loving son. The way he talked convinced me that the only thing he really cared about was getting her away from here.

  “I tried to tell you. He wants to do something to her.”

  Lytton propped his fists on her desk, leaned his bulk onto his arms. In spite of his posture, however, his eyes flinched. “You’re not helping, Doctor,” he said softly. “Telling me I fucked up doesn’t do shit for Sara Clint. We’ve got to get her back.

  “I need to know where he’s going. Hell, he could be halfway out of the county by now. I can call in help. We can set up roadblocks, try to stop him. But there are too many small roads. We can’t block them all. Hell, we don’t even know what kind of car he drives. That fool Gund was too scared to look.

  “And while we’re sitting at roadblocks, he can hole up anywhere he wants. We’ll never find him. Until he’s already done”—Lytton swallowed hard—“whatever the fuck he has in mind.

  “It’s too late to tell me I should have listened to you. Tell me how to find him.”

  Linden recognized the justice of his response. In some sense, she respected it. But s
he was not moved. The look in his eyes disturbed her. Their mix of fear and fury seemed to promise butchery.

  Terrible things might happen to Joan and Sara if Lytton tried to kill Roger—

  Linden held the sheriff’s gaze until he looked away. Then, distinctly, she said, “There’s something I need to know first.”

  “Are you shitting me?” he protested. “Roger Covenant has a fucking hostage, he has Sara Clint! We need to move! What can you possibly need to know first?”

  Linden did not relent. Instead she said precisely, “When Julius Berenford found Joan on Haven Farm ten years ago, she was sane. She couldn’t remember what had happened to her, but she could talk. She could function, at least to some extent. But by the time you delivered her to County Hospital, Sheriff Lytton, she was a vegetable. Entirely out of reach. If we didn’t take such good care of her, she would have died years ago.

  “What happened while you were driving her back into town? What changed her?”

  With a jerk, Lytton pulled himself upright. A sudden flush darkened his cheeks. Glaring at the center of Linden’s forehead, he said, “We’ve had this conversation, Doctor.”

  “Yes, we have,” she insisted. “But I need a better answer. It’s time to talk about it. Tell me what happened.”

  Her pager chirped at her, but she ignored it. She had come too far and waited too long to let Barton Lytton evade her now.

  Darkness spread down Lytton’s neck, staining his skin with threats. Yet he could not conceal his fear. His eyes seemed to cower in their sockets. Linden thought that he might refuse to answer; but she had underestimated his rage—or his shame. Abruptly he bared his teeth as if he were grinning. His eyes found hers in defiance.

  “Oh, it’s nothing much,” he answered between his teeth. “I didn’t hurt her or anything, if that’s what you think.

  “Of course, I cuffed her. She was a fucking accessory, for God’s sake. For all I knew, she’d killed her damn ex.” He faltered for an instant, wincing. Then he rasped, “After that, I made her ride in back.”

  The back of a police car: the cage. Bars between her and the front seat. No handles inside the doors. Like a dangerous criminal.