Symphony - [Millennium Quartet 01]

by Charles L. Grant

  “Spanish,” she said flatly. They do that all the time. You come from New Mexico, they think you’re a Mex. Pain in the ass, but from Stan she didn’t mind. “A little Indian, too, you know?”

  “Wow. No kidding?”

  She smiled. “No kidding.”

  He rocked side to side, hands in his pockets, waiting, gravel crunching beneath his feet.

  A truck growled westward. Its headlights were dim; they didn’t touch Lupé at all.

  “What’s she doing?” He rocked again, nervous.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m getting cold.”

  “So go inside.”

  “I can’t.”

  She knew what he meant; they had to wait.

  It wouldn’t take long.

  They felt rather than saw her move, gliding toward them out of the dark, the glow of the headlamps catching a smile Lupé wished she hadn’t seen. She nodded to them, nodded at the car, and they hurried inside. Shivering. Waiting until she slid in behind the wheel before Lupé said, “What’s wrong?”

  “The guy,” Stan said suddenly. He looked into the back. “The guy, right?”

  “What guy?”

  “It’s all right,” Susan said calmly, quietly. “It’s all right, nothing’s wrong.” She inhaled slowly. “We’ll go a little slower now, but nothing’s changed. Don’t worry. Nothing’s changed.”

  Oh, yes, it has, Lupé thought, pulling her legs up, huddling in the corner; oh, yes, it has.

  While Susan laughed softly.

  And for a moment, just a moment, the headlights burned dark red.

  * * * *

  Part 4

  Overture

  * * * *

  1

  1

  D

  awn wasn’t much more than an hour gone, and the sky was already pale, the sun already white.

  Casey sat on his front porch in a simple wood chair, bare soles braced against the railing, hands flat on his thighs, every so often a finger tapping the black denim. His shirt was open halfway down his chest, as if he had begun to undress and had given up the effort.

  No breeze, no sound in the forest, no sound from the river.

  No voices.

  For a while there, for hours, there had been nothing but voices.

  County sheriff and state police sweeping in, asking questions; Doc hastily explaining what Casey already knew, about air left in lungs and postmortem muscle contractions; Enid screaming, half in terror, half in joy; the sheriff leading Bowes and the others into the woods; sirens; the sudden slap of helicopter blades, up there in the dark, while the night was slashed with searchlight beams; Enid, weeping, falling on her knees with at least five others, praying loudly, heedless of those who either backed away or gawked; a single gunshot, deep in the woods; ambulance carrying the charred body away; voices in his ear, requesting, demanding, begging, cajoling.

  i did it

  Reed Turner finally taking his arm, Nate Dane on the other side, bringing him to Micah’s pickup for the short, eternally long, trip home.

  On the porch: “Are you going to be all right, Reverend Chisholm?”

  In the kitchen: “Here, take some water.”

  In the bedroom: “You okay? You want me to turn on the fan?”

  And Cora, hovering in the background, saying nothing.

  i did it

  The moment they had left and he closed his eyes, he had seen the fire, the eyes, and he got up, went to the porch, sat, and stared.

  Mel was right, of course. Enid could scream miracle all she wanted, but Mel Farber was right.

  The man was dead.

  And Casey had seen the life in those eyes.

  * * * *

  He sat without moving.

  He had watched flashing lights blur down toward the river, listened to the helicopter drone overhead, listened to distant voices make their way through the trees, listened to the thud and march of his heartbeat and his blood.

  Finally there had been silence and nothing lit the night except the cigarette in his hand. He didn’t smoke it. He had only wanted the tiny light, and the smell of burning tobacco to mask the smell of burning flesh.

  The sun sucked the night into shadows, and he had prayed, “Thank You.”

  He shifted a little and yawned, so loud and so hard he felt his jaw pop.

  A crow settled on the lawn, the first life he had seen since the rising of the sun. It preened itself, strutted, fluttered to the gate and spread its tail feathers, spread its wings. Stretching. Looking around for breakfast.

  “Slim pickin’s,” Casey said, his voice hoarse.

  The bird started, but didn’t leave.

  Slowly Casey placed his feet on the floor, grabbed the railing with both hands and hauled himself up, groaning aloud. The crow did leave then, a brittle fluttering of its wings, and he gave it a mocking salute, wished it well, and swayed a little. He wanted to sleep, and was frightened of it. Terrified of it. Yet he had to sleep. He could feel the sickness still lurking in his system, could feel the solid weight of exhaustion on his shoulders and across his back.

  If he didn’t sleep, he would collapse.

  If he collapsed, they would find him, and there would be voices again.

  Never-ending voices.

  “Lord,” he whispered as he made his way to the door, “I sure could use a big old break about now. I damn sure could use some rest.”

  Once inside, he also prayed for the miracle of air-conditioning, something he had never bothered with simply because it had never been this almighty, damnable hot. A pair of fans suited him when he was home during the day, and at night there had always been the woodland breeze.

  Despite the humidity outside, the cabin was oven dry. Sapping him. Making him sluggish.

  He wasn’t really hungry, but he made himself a light breakfast—cereal and milk and two pieces of toast—scolding himself all the while because he knew he was stalling.

  He was afraid.

  This time of the dark that waited behind closed eyes.

  All these years, and he was still a coward.

  He ate, and tasted nothing, returned to the living room and dropped onto the couch and used the remote control to switch on the television sitting in the fireplace. He searched for news of last night’s gunfire and accident, but even with all that, the Landing was evidently too small for caring. He waited for the weather, raising a cynical eyebrow when a cartoonlike map purported clouds on the way.

  They had been saying that for a week, and people still died and thirsted and lost control and died.

  Sick of it, sick of the promises, he shut the TV off and glanced over at the telephone, wondering if he dared call Helen, or Mel, to see what had happened after he had left.

  Probably nothing.

  Had they found the second man, someone would have come running.

  He yawned, stretched his legs, wiggled his toes.

  The remote slipped from his hand and bounced off the cushion to the floor. He stared at it dumbly, blinking slowly, willing himself to reach down there, that’s all he had to do, reach down there and pick it up before someone stepped on it.

  He stared until it blurred.

  He couldn’t move.

  i did it

  He began to weep. Softly, no sobbing. Just the tears on his cheeks, dripping one by one onto his chest, and onto the cross, around his neck.

  * * * *

  Standing in the meadow, his Bible in one hand, parchment pages flipping over by the hand of a breeze that tickled hair across his face and teased his lips with moisture;

  Standing in the meadow, birds overhead, flocks of them and all kinds of them, dipping low, veering away, while deer and bear and raccoons and skunks and a bobcat and a copperhead and a lop-eared dog eyed him from the tall brittle grass;

  Standing in the meadow, his voice the thunder that matched the clouds that killed the sun;

  Standing in the meadow with his Bible in one hand, the other pointing at the people who stood
in the road and screamed.

  Standing in the meadow.

  Preaching sermons to the dead.

  * * * *

  Opening his eyes, stiffness in his back and the back of his neck, his lips open, a touch of spittle at the corner of his mouth. His head was propped against the couch’s right armrest, his feet hanging over the left.

  A shadow hovered in the doorway.

  “Padre? You awake?”

  Casey used hands and elbows to push himself up, waving as he did an invitation for Arlo to come on in.

  “Man, it’s an oven in here. You trying to lose weight? You trying to sweat out the sick stuff? You going to sleep all day? Half the afternoon’s gone already.”

  Realization that he was drenched made Casey grimace, wrinkle his nose at the stench that clung to his arms and torso.

  “I need a shower,” he said, trying to scrub the sleep from his face. “Why don’t you wait on the porch? I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  “Your call, Padre.”

  Casey grunted, didn’t bother with the hot water, letting the cold shock life back into his muscles, and thought back into his brain. After dressing, still without boots, he joined Mackey, who had taken the swing; he took the chair again, turning it to face him.

  Arlo gave him the peace sign. “No offense, Preacher, but you look like hell.”

  Casey almost smiled. Arlo wasn’t much of a vision himself. His jeans were too large and streaked with dark stains; his Hawaiian shirt wrinkled as if he’d slept in it and didn’t quite hide the bulge of his paunch; his eyes were red-rimmed and smudged with shadow, and his hair was only barely captured m that ragged ponytail.

  He leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees.

  Casey waited a moment, then said, “Tell me, Arlo.”

  The law had taken over the diner as temporary headquarters, and Mackey had been the last to make his statement, telling the sheriff about two men who had barged in, guns waving and blazing, Arlo himself grabbing his perfectly legal shotgun and protecting himself, his bar, and his customers the only way he knew how. He didn’t know the men, had never seen them before, and was grateful Casey had arrived when he had, no telling what would have happened, who would have died.

  “That’s what I told them.” A shrug. “You think I’m, like, going to hell for lying?”

  “Which one of them was Escobar?” was all Casey said, taking no satisfaction in the way Arlo sat up, startled and afraid.

  “You knew?”

  “Guessed some. Figured some. Doc had the clues. Is it true, Arlo? These were the men who did all the renting?”

  True enough, and more. Escobar’s people were indeed planning to take the Landing over. In their own sweet time. It wouldn’t take much. Without funds to last the winter, he said, folks would eventually start selling and Escobar would start buying. All legal, signed and sealed. Two years, tops.

  “And if you didn’t sell?”

  Arlo aged a decade as his hand passed wearily over his face. “I don’t know. Nothing, probably. You know. The way Diño put it, who would care, a bunch of spies in the woods.” His lips curved into a brief, unreadable smile. “Ordinary folks just like you, Padre. They just happen to have relatives, you know what I mean?”

  “A man died last night, Arlo.”

  Mackey took a bandanna from his hip pocket and mopped his face, nodding.

  “They nearly ran Reed down.”

  Mackey nodded again; the bandanna kept moving.

  Casey looked out at the road, afraid of the anger that constricted his lungs. He looked away. There was no color or comfort out there, only the heat.

  “Why,” he said, “didn’t you tell that to the police?”

  “You been there, man,” Mackey said without looking up. “You know what it’s like. I’m too old for that shit. I just want to go to Arizona, put up my feet, watch the sun set over the mountains.” He pushed his glasses up with one finger. “The cops, they don’t have respect for a man’s dream, you know?” Suddenly he raised his head. “You’re not going to tell them, Padre, are you? Jeez, you’re not going to tell them?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  Panicked, Mackey sat up, one foot tapping the floor. “But this is, like, confession, right? You can’t tell.”

  Casey shook his head. “No, Arlo, this isn’t, like, confession.” He stood slowly, watching the older man shrink back into his seat. “A man died, Arlo.”

  “A crash! For God’s sake, it was a crash!”

  please don’t please don’t hurt me

  “You shot him.”

  “Self-defense!”

  The heat; he felt the heat.

  “Was it, Arlo?”

  Mackey scrambled to his feet, head shaking, hands out, the bandanna waving like a red flag of truce. “You don’t get it, man,” he said. “You don’t get it.”

  Casey didn’t move to stop him when he stumbled down the steps, said nothing to calm the terror in the man’s face, in the way his arms flapped, the way his head jerked side-to-side like an aged bird searching for the hunter. Instead, he leaned against the post until Mackey fumbled with the gate latch, whimpering when it wouldn’t open right away.

  But as soon as he was on the road, Casey said, “Arlo.”

  Mackey turned, eyes too wide.

  “Think about it,” he said, far more gently than he felt. “One of us has to say something. You know that.”

  “They’ll kill me!” Arlo insisted loudly. “They’ll... they’ll...” He took off his glasses, wiped his face, squinted at the half-lenses as if they had the answer. Then he put the bandanna back in his pocket, the glasses back on his nose, and took a step toward town. One step before he turned. “Jesus, Padre,” he said, “just who the hell do you think you are?”

  * * * *

  2

  The next one was Mel Farber, white shirt stained under the arms and across the belly.

  ‘‘How you doing, Case?”

  “I just talked to Arlo.”

  “I saw him on the road. Fool was practically running. He was talking to himself. What did you say to him?”

  “A few words of wisdom, Mel. You were right. About Escobar.”

  “Why am I not surprised? And don’t argue, I just remembered, but I had a talk with a friend the other day. Come Monday, there’ll be an air conditioner here for you.”

  “Doc—”-

  “Don’t argue, Case, it’s already done. What did Arlo say? He going to the police?”

  “I gave him a choice.”

  “You used the look, right?”

  Casey stared, and laughed, admitting the truth and embarrassed as well.

  Mel was on the top step, black hair glistening with sweat, leaning his back against the post. His white tennis shoes were grey with road dust, the crease of his white trousers not quite straight. “A hell of a night, Case.”

  “Anyone else hurt?”

  “No. Well, probably Escobar, but they can’t find him. Todd talked to the sheriff about an hour ago. They think he made it as far down as the highway, probably forced himself a ride.” He scratched the back of his neck, stared at his knees.

  “You don’t think so?”

  “No. A crash like that... no. Not,” he added reluctantly, “unless he was extremely lucky.”

  Casey leaned forward. “You don’t think he’s still in town?”

  “They did a quick house-to-house, checked the dock... nothing. The empty ones were locked solid. I don’t know where he is.” A pudgy hand waved toward the woods across the road. “But he’s out there somewhere. If he’s alive, he’s bleeding to death.”

  “They still looking?”

  Mel’s face showed nothing when he said, “Bowes, a couple of others. A deputy’s with them.” The expression changed. “You okay?”

  “You already asked me that.”

  “So?”

  “He was dead, Mel.”

  “Yes. He was.”

  “He stayed dead.”

  Farbe
r nodded, no room for doubt, no crack wide enough for a miracle to slip through.