by Brian Hodge
She shook her head, too ashamed for the moment to dare say a word.
“Nice people up there,” he said, looking straight ahead. “A couple of them are a little strange … but that’s something else, something I needn’t bother you with.” He reached down for the handbrake, released it and looked up. “Well, Miss Yarrow, I’m sorry you can’t be with us this afternoon, and I’ll pass on your regrets to your mother. However, should you have second thoughts, please be my guest for dinner, at least.”
Before she could reply, he had pulled away and was driving slowly out of the oval and down the lane. Bewilderment kept her in place for several minutes, made her move thoughtfully toward the garage where she dumped her unpleasant bundle into the back seat of her car. She had planned on taking the dead bird down to the hospital where she hoped someone would be able to tell her whether or not the crow actually could have flown as it had, with only a single wing. Now, however, she wasn’t sure if that’s what she should do. In the first place, she thought as she backed the car out and headed for the Pike, she was only kidding herself if she really thought one of the staff would say sure, a bird can fly with only one wing, just takes a simple matter of guts and aerodynamics. Kidding herself to postpone the facing of a paradox. And in the second place, there was more lying swirling around her than she was able to take.
Her parents.
Her brothers.
And now … either Angus or Kraylin—the one said there was money, the other said there wasn’t. And if it hadn’t been for the spectacle of that run-down car, her first and natural inclination would have been to believe the lawyer.
Not sure.
Too many things … not sure.
Luckily, she found a parking space in front of the store, let her gaze dart swiftly to the window of Ed’s apartment before hurrying inside.
There were no customers. Paul was sitting behind the counter with a book in his hand, his glasses propped on his forehead while he squinted at the type. He was too lost in his reading to see her pass by, and she grinned and wondered if she could walk out without paying; not on your life, she told herself as she headed back for the office—coming in is one thing, going out is another.
Iris was laboring over a special order form when Cyd rapped lightly on the doorframe to attract her attention. A bony hand instantly settled on the old woman’s breast.
“Did I startle you, Iris?” she said, still grinning.
“No respect for the aged,” Iris muttered, and pushed her chair back. “You coming in for the rest of the day?”
“I wish I could,” she said, settling on a corner of the desk, shoving aside papers and ignoring Iris’ frown. “But I still have some things to do. Listen, Iris, I need to know something—did Wallace ever work for the Kraylin Clinic after he left us?”
“Was fired.”
“All right, all right … after he was fired.”
Iris set a forefinger on her chest and stroked the flesh lightly. Cyd knew she was stalling, that her memory was infallible even if her body was not. But she waited patiently, two decades of experience cautioning her that Iris Lennon was never ever to be pushed, not until she figured out what the information asked for was worth in her time.
“I don’t know,” she finally said. “Not really sure. He could have, I suppose. We didn’t talk much after. He kept to himself a lot. Why?”
“Nothing, no reason. Just something I heard today.”
“What’s the Kraylin Clinic, anyway?”
She turned quickly. It was Paul with a question, the book he’d been reading still in one hand, a finger in the pages to mark his place. When he repeated his question, she told him what she was looking for, and he scratched at his temple with the book before sighing.
“Tell you the truth, I never heard of it. You, dear?”
“Can’t say that I have,” Iris said.
“For heaven’s sake, Iris, why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
“Didn’t ask if I knew it,” Iris said, as though the answer were too obvious to be spoken aloud. “Only wanted to know if Wallace did work there.”
A voice from the front turned them all around, and Sandy McLeod—amazingly, handsomely dressed in a safari leisure suit—stood at the head of the center aisle with his hands on his hips. Cyd smiled broadly and hurried out to greet him, turned him around by the shoulder and demanded to know if he were trying to make them all look decrepit.
“Did I do something wrong?” he asked, suddenly unsure.
“No, of course not, Sandy, but this …” and she gestured to the suit. “My Lord, Mr. McLeod, you’re going to make us all respectable if you don’t look out.”
The boy grinned, waved to the Lennons who had not followed Cyd out, then scurried behind the counter and began poking at the register. “Great,” he said. “Man, I can’t wait.”
“Well, why don’t you … I mean, you’re awfully early, Sandy. Don’t you think—”
“Early!” he said, pulling back a sleeve to stare at his watch. “Miss Yarrow, I just got this watch for my birthday. And according to this I’m ten minutes late.”
Cyd was about to correct him, then looked out to the street and saw the shadows on the blacktop crawling swiftly toward her. There were lights glowing in the stores opposite Yarrow’s, and the sun had already dropped below the roofs. Good Lord, she thought, how long was I out there?
“Sandy, listen,” she said, quickly rebuttoning her coat, “I’ve got to run. Either Mr. or Mrs. Lennon will stay with you until closing. Don’t forget to lock the back door and see to it that the deposits are put into the bank. Paul knows how much we should keep until tomorrow.”
“But Miss Yarrow, this is only my first—”
“Please, Sandy, I haven’t got time. Just be a good boy and do as you’re told.”
Sandy dropped hard on the stool as if he had been slapped, but Cyd was too suddenly caught up in an odd sense of urgency to stay and apologize and stroke the boy’s ego. She stopped only once, the door opened and held by a cock of her hip. “Sandy, did your grandfather ever work for Dr. Kraylin, out on the Pike?”
“Who?”
“Never mind,” she muttered, and raced for her car. Cut off a truck when she pulled away from the curb, cut off another when she turned a hard left onto High Street. A glance as she passed Ed’s office told her it was closed. She frowned. Ten after four; unless he was still searching for the owner of that limo, he should have been there, or contacted her by now. A station wagon stalled at the next intersection made her want to lean on the horn, and her fingers drummed the steering wheel increasingly rapidly until at last the vehicle moved and she sped through the traffic.
The urgency grew, and she did not want to fight it.
It reminded her of a time when she had been nineteen and Rob had fallen from the wall behind their castle shack. She’d been at the high school that particular afternoon, talking with some of her old teachers about her first year at college. That same sense of now! had struck her almost physically, and she’d run several cars off the road in her haste to get home. And by the time she’d reached the lane, an ambulance was driving out—Rob had suffered a broken back and left leg, and only the intensity of care had put him on his feet again. Two years of struggling. Two years of therapy. A miracle, it had been said, that the spinal cord hadn’t been severed.
For months she’d believed it had been a genuine, occult premonition, until it had been pointed out to her—by Angus, in fact, if she remembered things right—that she had known Rob would be fooling around in that area that day from something he had said to her only that morning; that she knew the condition of the wall, the weather, and the fact that he could never resist a tightrope act when he was back there. Three years older and still playing the kid.
“Just a matter of putting things together,” the lawyer had said. “It’s happened to me in court, too. You stand there in front of the judge and suddenly, like someone whispering in your ear, a few of those loose ends aren’t lo
ose anymore. Disconcerting, to say the least; especially when the loose ends have a tendency to hang your client.”
This time, however, there was no premonition, no portents of disaster—only a definite strong feeling that if she moved fast enough, hard enough, it would all come together. Like reaching for the ring on a carousel; one quick lunge and you have it, and the free ride is yours.
Fast enough.
Hard enough.
And when she saw Ed’s car she almost screamed.
The Oxrun hospital took up the entire block facing King Street, between Devon and Northland—brick and grey marble, tall tinted windows on each of its two stories, a small parking lot behind and on either side. Over the four revolving front doors was an aluminum canopy that reflected the harsh red of the setting sun, and at the curb was Ed’s automobile, its front end smashed in as though he had hit a pole.
Cyd braked instantly, felt the car skew before she regained control, and parked across the street in a space by a hydrant. There were only a few people about in the green and soft lobby, and she was able to calm herself before she reached the receptionist, ask about Ed without a tremor in her voice. And as soon as she had, a hand touched at her shoulder. She started, turned, saw Ed sheepishly grinning. There was a bandage wrapped around his brow, several stained cuts on his jaw and his neck. Blood stains on his coat. A small bandage on his left hand.
Not daring to speak, she took his hand and led him to a small waiting area where couches and chairs were hidden behind a proliferation of carefully tended plants, and an aquarium or two. When he sat, she stood in front of him, not knowing whether to be angry because he hadn’t called, or concerned though there didn’t seem to be any pain in his eyes.
“Well?” was the best she could do.
He shrugged. “I thought I saw him out on Mainland.”
She waited. You idiot, she thought; you’re a little old to play cowboy.
He swallowed and tried to brush at his coat. “I thought I saw him—as it turned out it wasn’t him—so I took off after him. Somebody took a straight-away and turned it into a bend. The old buggy doesn’t have it much these days. I wasn’t going too fast when he got me—the tree, that is, so I guess I was lucky.”
“Lucky?” She turned away and stared out the front window. Turned back with most of her temper in hand. “Lucky? You are crazy. You’re crazy, that’s all there is to it. Damnit, Ed, you’re not a cop anymore, you know that don’t you? You could have been killed!” The trembling began in her arms, traveled to her legs and she sat quickly beside him, grabbing his good hand and squeezing it tightly. “You’re crazy.”
“Well, maybe, maybe not. Right now I just ache.”
She pointed toward the street. “How’d … you didn’t drive that mess back here alone, did you?”
He shook his head, slowly. “No, some guy was there when it happened.” He put a finger to the bandage. “It’s just a deep cut, that’s all. More blood than I thought I had in me. He, this guy, he wrapped a handkerchief or something about it and drove me straight back here. He knew some guys on the staff and they took care of me right away.” He smiled, then, and postured. “Ain’t nobody going to keep this fool down.”
She tried to laugh, but the sight of his courage overlaying his pale face was too much; she looked away and wiped at her eyes with her sleeve. He was drugged, evidently, something mild to help the pain, and when she squeezed his hand again she was taken by the cold.
“Are you sure it wasn’t him?” she said then.
“Pretty sure. Why?”
She took a deep breath and pulled all her thoughts together. “Never mind,” she said. “I’m going to take you home and then I have to see Angus. There are a few things he told us last night that I want to clear up.”
“Cyd, why don’t you give it up?”
She looked at him harshly, her hand back to her lap.
“I’m worried about you,” he said. “Why don’t you just give your folks a chance—”
“How many times have I said you’re crazy today? Well, here’s another one—you’re crazy, Ed. Everybody’s talking to me and nobody’s being straight with me. I can see a handful of generations of Yarrows slipping into the dust, and I’m not going to sit back and watch it happen without trying to contribute something.”
“But you could get hurt.” He jerked a thumb at his head, winced and dropped his arm.
“They didn’t do that to you, Ed.”
“Maybe not, but aren’t you getting tired of all these coincidences? Cars chasing us to hell and gone through the valley, that … that thing at the house last night … why don’t you just wait for your father to come clean, huh?”
She leaned back in the chair and stared at him, finding excuses for his behavior in the drugs he must have been given, the shock he must have had when he lost control of the car. But there was something more in the way he kept his eyes on her face, the way he sat so stiffly as if movement would make him scream. And when she knew what it was she almost could not face him—he was afraid, as much for himself as he was for her. Then, she thought, it had to have been the Greybeast he had been following, and it was the Greybeast, not his lack of skills or a sudden turn, that had driven him off the road. Ed Grange was afraid.
She had lost her rusty knight.
“I’ll take you home,” she said again. “Then I have to talk to Angus.”
She rose, but he did not follow.
“If you don’t mind, Cyd,” he said after a long second, “I’m going to sit here for a bit.” He smiled weakly. “I don’t think I want to be too far from a doctor just now. They took the X-rays and stuff, but … I think I’d rather stay here. Just for a few minutes. Unless … unless you’ll come in with me and sit for a while.”
She could not understand what was happening to her, could not believe the words that she said, “I have to see Angus, Ed. I can’t wait much longer.”
“All right. That’s all right. Come by later?”
His grin was infectious. She bent over and kissed his cheek gingerly, nearly flinched at the smell of blood and antiseptic, the cold she had noticed when she had held his hand. Then she walked back to the reception counter and waited for the nurse to finish on the phone.
“Miss,” she said, with a nod of indication, “that man … he wants to stay here for a while. He was in an accident, a minor one, but he doesn’t feel up to going home right now. Would it be all right … ?”
“Of course,” the nurse said. “If you’ll just give me his name, I’ll be sure to let the doctor who treated him know. Just in case.”
“Grange,” Cyd said. “Edwin Grange. I don’t know who brought him in, but I guess someone in Emergency will have all the details.”
The nurse unclipped a pen from her breast pocket and noted the information on a pad by the phone, smiled and Cyd walked slowly to the door. Ed had not moved. He was staring out the window, watching the air darken, barely breathing, scarcely blinking. There was a moment, then, when she wanted to go to him, to hold him in her arms and rock him until he slept … but it was only a moment, and she did not much like herself when she stepped out the door. Decided that since she was so close to Angus already, she might as well walk, to fill her lungs with fresh air.
A tow truck was hitching a chain to Ed’s car as she passed, but she paid it no mind as she crossed King and headed down Northland. She tried, instead, to drive his image from her mind by rehearsing what she would say to Angus when she saw him. Determined that nothing would make her leave that house until she was satisfied that that quarter at least had yielded her all the information it had. And once that was done she would check on Ed, hoping she could make him understand, if he didn’t already, that she hadn’t deserted him though it seemed she was needed.
A wind gust dropped her hair into her eyes.
A look to the streetlamps, another and they were on.
Her stride narrowed, her pace slowed, and in less than five minutes she was standing in front of the house. On
e hand lay lightly at the top of the hedging, and she scanned for a moment the homes on either side, and the street behind her. There was no sign of movement, no sign of life, just some cars in the driveways and red wagons on the walks and in the gutter near the corner a large green-and-white ball pushed at by the wind, trembling but not moving.
There was nothing at all massive about the lawyer’s small ranch home, nothing she could see that was intimidating or foreboding; but she had a sudden impulse that almost made her race back to the hospital and hold Ed’s cold hand, to warm it, bring life to it, to make him smile without the fear. Ironic, she thought with a broad border of acid—the knight had been unhorsed and the lady was riding. When an ambulance wailed she glanced quickly to her right, back toward King Street and its obvious destination. The impulse to return grew stronger, and she shuddered with it, fighting the guilt that spread black around her. Her ears began to sting, and she knew it was the cold; when her eyes began to water she whispered it has to be the wind.
It grew darker.
An old man in shirtsleeves came out onto the porch of the house next door, thumbs in suspenders as he watched her without malice. She brushed a finger beneath her eyes, looked once more back to King Street, then took a single step up the walk before she paused, and frowned.
The curtains in the front windows to the right of the stoop had fluttered, as though someone had parted them briefly and let go.
And she wondered how long Angus had been watching.
Chapter 13
After several spurts of knocking, each increasingly heavy, there was no answer. The doorknob would not turn; the porch light stayed dark. Several cars sped past with headlights too bright for comfort in the dark haze dusk, and Cyd flinched as though the beams were lashes across her shoulders. She knocked again, as loudly as she could, barely resisted the temptation to call Angus’ name. A step back to stare angrily at the windows to either side, accusingly at the door that refused to yield to her. Fists jammed into her coat pockets. A second search of the windows for signs of betrayal, and she hurried down the steps and across the front lawn. Shrubs packed the grass from the house to the hedge, and she threaded her way awkwardly through them until she reached the back. Paused. Waited. Looked sharply to her left at the nearest window as if expecting a face to be following her progress.
