Symphony - [Millennium Quartet 01]

by Charles L. Grant

  The crow returned to the gatepost, feathers slightly ruffled. Casey smiled at it, wondering what the poor thing had ran up against, why it wasn’t with the rest of the flock.

  “Mel, why are you here?”

  “You’re my patient, right? If I don’t take care of you, you’ll sue me and I’ll end up like Arlo, tending bar someplace, or collecting empties for chump change.”

  Casey looked at him without turning his head.

  Mel wiped a bead of sweat from his cheek. “Strange question, Case.”

  “Strange days, Mel.”

  The crow turned around to face them.

  “Do you have to know?”

  Casey shook his head.

  “I didn’t kill anyone, there was no malpractice, nothing quite so dramatic as anything like that.”

  The crow hopped to the grass, stabbed at it, stabbed again, and took off, vanishing into sunlight before it reached the tops of the trees.

  “Big city hospitals, big city patients, then small town patients, small town clinic. Then, here to the Landing.” He touched his breast pocket, fingered the pen poking out of the pocket. “I’m not even forty, Case, and I’m already tired. Can you believe it? Trust me, healing ain’t what it’s cracked up to be.”

  After a long minute Casey said, “It can be, you know. One patient at a time.”

  “They need you, Case,” Mel said in response. A gesture up the road. “The church was locked this morning.”

  “I’m tired, Mel. Almighty tired.”

  “So am I.” He was irritable. “But guess what? Harve Turner cut his leg open trying to jump a deadfall this morning, playing posse, and I had to stitch him up. Amazing. He was sober. And Mrs. Racine has palpitations from all the excitement, so I calmed her down, reminded her to take her nitro pills, sent her home after she cried because she couldn’t give me any tomatoes from her garden. Cora banged up her arm, running around last night, I had to gauze it.” He stood, hands on his hips, cheeks flushed, chin jutting a dare. “Any minute now, I expect some idiot to come in with a damn gunshot wound, my car’s barely running, and you want to talk to me about being almighty goddamn tired?”

  Startled, Casey lifted a quick hand in apology and retreat, but it was too late. Farber was already on his way to the car, and he didn’t look back, didn’t wave as he drove away.

  “Oh, nice, Case,” he said to the backs of his hands. “Well done. Real nice.”

  But Mel hadn’t seen the life in the dead man’s eyes.

  * * * *

  3

  He had just enough time to go inside and pour himself a glass of refrigerator cold water before he had another visitor. As he stood on the porch, sipping and sighing, he wondered what Mel was so hot about. He didn’t have to go up the road; everyone was coming down here for a change.

  Reed opened the gate and nudged Cora through.

  They were dressed in shorts and T-shirts, sneakers and no socks. Cora had a gauze pad on her left arm, just above the elbow, wrapped around with surgical tape.

  The ice water turned sour.

  Casey perched on the railing. “Morning.”

  “Afternoon,” Reed reminded him with a grin.

  Cora said nothing, only stared sullenly at the ground.

  Casey wiped his mouth with the back of a hand, squinted at the sky. “Seems you were bored the other night. Can’t be very bored now.”

  Reed toed the flagstone. “It ...” He shrugged with one shoulder. “It was...”

  “Not like on TV,” Casey offered.

  The boy nodded.

  “It’s what happens when things get real, son. Kind of hits you like a brick, right between the eyes.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “Don’t intend to. It was ugly enough the first time.”

  Reed smiled again, but he kept glancing at Cora, opening his mouth, changing his mind, until finally Casey slipped down to the top step. “Reed, you know that oil can I have in the garage? Why don’t you do this sick old reverend a favor, work on the gate hinges for me. That way your next surprise will be a surprise.”

  Reed hesitated, looked at Cora one more time, and trotted away.

  Cora jammed her hands in her hip pockets. Her hair was too short for a pony tail; she used one hand, then the other, to push it back over her ears.

  “Gave your arm a good one,” he said, nodding at the bandage.

  “Yeah. Tree.”

  “Should be more careful. Dark means you can’t see so well, you tend to bump into things. Like trees.”

  “Yeah.”

  He emptied his glass, held it out. “You want some ice water? Plenty in the fridge.”

  She wavered, checked over her shoulder at Reed studiously working on the gate, then nodded, grabbing the glass as she ran past.

  Reed looked up.

  Casey used a hand to tell him to keep at it.

  Waiting for the crow.

  The screen door slammed, and he felt a wedge of cold pressed on his shoulder—a full glass for him. He thanked her and, as she started down the steps, said, “Sit, Cora.”

  She did, right beside him, her head just reaching the level of his shoulder.

  They watched Reed for a few seconds, shimmering heat behind him, smearing the trees.

  Casey sipped, smacked his lips loudly, ran the glass across his forehead, sighing at the relief, however temporary. “You want to tell me?” Tennessee soft in his voice, his expression. “Do I have to guess?”

  Nothing in her voice: “What do you care?”

  He shifted, putting his spine against the post, drawing up a leg, free hand on his knee. “After all this time, Cora, you have to ask a stupid question like that?”

  “Yeah, right.” She held her glass so tightly, he was afraid it would shatter. “It’s your job, right? I mean, it’s not like it means anything.”

  “What I do,” he said, fingering the gold-chain cross that hung beneath his shirt, “what I try to do is make sure people don’t get eaten by the wolves.” He watched the sun set sparks in her hair, the anger jump a muscle under her jaw. “My job isn’t something that I do. I do it, fight the wolves, because I want to. Maybe because I have to. You look at it that way, I really don’t have a job at all. Not like Todd Odam, for example. Or Doc Farber. I do what I do, Cora. I do what I do.”

  Reed tested the gate; it squealed, and he sighed, loud enough for them to hear, and to let them know he was still working.

  “What happened?” she said, working hard at a sneer. “You find Jesus in jail?”

  “Nope, not that easy. In a man.” He remembered a Tennessee hillside, the wind that blew that chilly, foggy morning. “And a woman.”

  She set her glass down on the step beside her, clasped her shins, leaned forward until her chin was on her knee. She tried twice to say something before she said, “You know what he did?”

  Casey put his own glass down.

  “He came back from playing hero, hunting that scum that shot up Arlo’s place. He came back, he grabbed me.” She moved, her bandaged arm, edges of a bruise slipping away from the tape. “He grabbed me and said ...” She swallowed hard, and choked. “He said ...”

  She closed her eyes, but not before he saw the first tear clinging to a lash.

  “I tried to kill him once, you know.” The tears didn’t stop, and she didn’t try to stop them. “Drunk on his ass in the living room. I picked up the poker and wanted so bad to hit him. Open his head, let his brains out all over the floor. I wanted to. God, I really wanted to.”

  Casey didn’t move.

  He felt the heat again.

  Inside.

  “You know why I didn’t?”

  He shook his head.

  She turned her head so her cheek was on her knee, her single laugh bitter enough to curl her lips.

  “I thought, Reverend Chisholm would hate me.” The first sob. “I didn’t want you to hate me.”

  And you hate me for that, he thought as she pressed her forehead to her knees and
let the sobs twist her shoulders, thump her heels, until he took a handkerchief from his pocket, sat beside her again, and put an arm around her back. Immediately, she was against his chest, holding the handkerchief to her nose, to her eyes, crying and apologizing and crying and cursing.

  While he rocked her.

  While he watched Reed look away, a swift hand across his eyes.

  While he rocked her.

  And the heat expanded.

  He didn’t ask her how long, or how often, or how hard. He knew. He had known. And he hadn’t had the blessed courage of his convictions to step in and find out, because he was afraid he might be wrong.

  Sorry bastard, he thought, then thought, sorry bastard at himself.

  He waited until she could hear him, then asked if she thought the Doyles would take her in for a couple of days. It took a while before she finally nodded; it took longer to sit up, blow her nose, and ask about her father.

  What he wanted to say was, he may have had a part in your birth, child, but he isn’t your father.

  What he said was, “I’ll take care of it. I just wish you’d come to me sooner.”

  Not only a sorry bastard, but a liar too.

  “That’s what I told her,” Reed said angrily, waving the oil can around. “I kept telling her and telling her, but she—”

  “Hush,” Casey told him gently.

  He hushed.

  Cora stood, a little wobbly, and walked away, suddenly smaller and much too young.

  He waited until she was out of earshot, then crooked a finger at Reed. When he was close enough, Reed spoke before he could: “You going to beat him up, Reverend? Kick the excuse me shit out of him?”

  Casey glared, and his voice deepened to a rumble. “You listen to me, boy, and listen to me good—you touch her, you even think about touching her the way she is now, you have no idea how angry that will make me. No idea at all.”

  “Reverend Chisholm!” Reed’s eyes widened and blinked in shock, and not a little fear as he took a step back. “I...how could you say ...”

  Casey smiled grimly.

  Waited.

  “Oh,” the boy finally said. Realization: “Oh!”

  “That,” Casey told him, “is sometimes called the fear of God.”

  Reed grinned uncertainly, sputtered a thanks; and ran off to catch up with Cora, just through the gate. She asked him something, he shook his head and put an arm around her waist, looked at Casey, and suddenly the arm was at his side. She put a hand against his chest—wait a second—and trotted back to the porch.

  Her face was hard, green eyes turned to stone. “Hurt him,

  Reverend Chisholm,” she begged. “Use your powers and hurt him.”

  * * * *

  4

  Knowing the Doyles were no friends of William Bowes made it easier to ask Noreen for an extra bed for Cora. By the tone of the woman’s voice, he didn’t have to explain much beyond mentioning the father’s name; when he suggested she talk it over first with her husband because there would surely be trouble down the road, she told him not to worry, they both knew how to handle bullies. Even ones with lawyers.

  Next he called Mel, spent five minutes apologizing for the slight and the self-pity, and asked him to contact some colleagues to arrange counseling for Cora and her father. Preferably not together; at least not for a while.

  “You’re sticking your head in a beehive, Case.”

  “Seems to me I’ve done that before, sort of.”

  Farber laughed.

  Casey hung up. Standing in his living room. Left hand in a fist, shaking as if he had palsy.

  He stood there, barely breathing, until he felt a breath of cold slither across his back.

  Lord, he thought, and hurried to the door.

  At the west end of the yard he spotted the buck he had seen the other day, back in the trees. Watching the house.

  The cold deepened, he heard a sound, and looked just in time to see the ragged crow hit the flagstone.

  When he looked again, the deer was gone.

  * * * *

  5

  It took him five minutes to dress and make himself presentable.

  It took him ten minutes standing at the door before he could bring himself to go out.

  He walked up Black Oak Road, seeing nothing but the steeple, hearing nothing but his footsteps, feeling nothing but the heat.

  He unlocked the church door, turned on the air-conditioning, stepped into the sanctuary, and stopped halfway to the altar.

  “All right, Lord,” he said. “If You don’t mind, You mind telling me what’s going on?”

  Stained-glass light, and the whisper of soft wings.

  He waited for countless seconds before squeezing between the pews to the left wall.

  There, below the windows, the carpet was covered with dying moths.

  The whisper of their wings.

  A glance at the cross as he made his way to the other side.

  Scores of them.

  Hundreds of them.

  The whisper of their desperate wings.

  * * * *

  2

  1

  T

  he fire demon wasn’t dead.

  It gnawed on Escobar’s arm most of the night, making him groan in his sleep while sleep drifted into fever.

  In the fever he saw Independence Square the way it was when tourists came into the city—full of cars and color, leaves and grass, the statue of Washington on his horse, the hucksters, the cameras. He had taken the train from Miami, on impulse decided not to go all the way to New York. A cabbie took him here, and he had stood for hours, blinking away the tears, the biggest damn grin in the world on his face.

  He had a feeling this place was going to make him rich.

  It almost had.

  Until the demon came and took him away with claws made of fire, and gnawed on his arm.

  He groaned again, this time loud enough to wake himself up.

  He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, his injured arm jammed between his side and the back of the couch. Carefully, hissing inward, he moved it until it was propped across his stomach. Blinked away the sweat. Licked his cracking dry lips. Smelled the stench of fear and running, and listened for sounds that shouldn’t have been.

  Nothing.

  Nothing but his breathing.

  Cursing, he sat up stiffly, favoring the arm, hissing again when a trace of surprisingly weak fire lanced up and through his shoulder and lodged in his temples. His suit jacket was in the floor, both shoes and one sock off, shirt unbuttoned down to his belt; he wondered how he did all that without waking up.

  He also wondered how long he could stay here much longer without drying up like a dead leaf.

  It was a small room, bedroom through one door, kitchen through another. The couch, two armchairs, a coffee table, not much more. A summer place where people didn’t spend much time. He took a breath, wiped his face with his good arm, and went to the front window. The drapes were heavy, crawling with vines and flowers. He used one finger to part them in the middle, and his vision had adjusted to daylight’s glare; he didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.

  Across the street, on the corner, was Mackey’s bar.

  He shook his head and stepped back. Tried to moisten his lips and realized he needed water, right now.

  Still moving backward, as though someone might crash through the front door if he turned around, he went into the kitchen. A radio on the counter beside the refrigerator. A dusty glass in the sink. The light here was a little brighter, the curtains on the window and back door not as heavy as the drapes. Still, he felt too open, spotted a door to his left and opened it: the bathroom.

  Nothing much, barely wide enough to walk through. A shower stall with pebbled translucent door, sink and mirror, and a toilet across from the sink. A second door led into the bedroom.

  There were no glasses; he didn’t care. He ran the water slowly, cupping his palms to use as a saucer, then to douse his face an
d hair. His reflection made him wince, bruises and scratches transforming him into a creature from the movies. His arm throbbed, his ribs and his right hip.

  Okay, he thought; gotta check, gotta know.