"No," she whispered.
"Damn straight. Won't stop with you, either. That baby, that man... Doesn't matter if they're your family or just another set of dupes. You don't want them dead. Best way to keep them safe is to keep the hell away."
"I know that! It's just..."
A light blinked on in the upstairs bedroom of one-one-eight Rosewater, glowing behind thick red curtains. Kimberly's breakfast rose up in her stomach. Suddenly, the thought of seeing Peter - or Peter seeing her - left her shaking. "Go!"
"Finally," Fitch grumbled, and pulled away from the curb. The slick squeal of tires carried down the street. "Let's get the hell out of this pit."
They could've stayed in the Mission. Rosenfeld had offered them the mattress - a single mattress between two, yes, but a mattress was better than the back seat of the Audi - and all the soup they could eat. So long as they played it her way, she'd keep them safe. But behind her words had been thinly veiled threats: she also wasn't going to accept Fitch bringing trouble down on all the homeless men and women waiting for their meal of the day. If the police came in search of Fitch and shut the place down, or if one of those clickers broke the wards and crept in through an open window...
So Fitch had taken the high road, made his apologies, and led Kimberly back out into the rain. Now they were cruising the streets of Rustwood looking for somewhere to sleep. Again.
Fitch turned down another street of empty row-houses, and Kimberly sighed. "And on the seventh day, God invented the Motel 6."
"No way. No motels. Nowhere to set up my wards. Besides, they'd throw us out as soon as they smelled what we were brewing."
"You have a house, don't you?"
"It's not safe. They'll be watching, you can bet. Eyes in every corner. Got wards around there too, but that won't stop them if they're determined. All about the will, you understand? If a man's got the will to walk through fire-"
"I don't have a clue what you're talking about-"
Fitch wasn't listening. "Look at that one!" He jabbed at one of the abandoned buildings. "That's the one. I feel it, don't you?"
It stood at the end of the street, three stories tall, towering over the row-houses and busted-up milk bars. Red brick, windows boarded over, gang tags and racial slurs sprayed six feet high across the door. A small garden out front encircled by a wrought-iron fence, the grass churned to mud and weeds, the remains of ferns wilting in the rain. A baby pram lay on its side in the middle of the path, rusted away to a skeleton, one wheel spinning lazily in the wind.
The sign above the double doors had almost been wiped clean by weather and time, but Kimberly could just make out the ghosts of lettering painted on chipboard: LEYBOURN COMMUNITY THEATRE.
Kimberly shuddered. "Looks like a B-grade horror waiting to happen."
"Whaddaya mean, waiting to happen?" Fitch grinned, showing the remains of his breakfast caught between his teeth. "This is my nine to five."
The front door wasn't locked, just stapled closed with a two-by-four and a couple nails. Three good kicks snapped it open, and Kimberly stepped through into the darkness.
In the thin light coming through the door Kimberly could just make out the extent of the lobby: a hall fifty feet on each side with a ticket booth partitioned away behind dusty plexiglass. The air was thick with mould and the walls reduced to a tapestry of graffiti, but the floorboards were dry and when Fitch tested the stairs leading to the mezzanine they barely creaked beneath his weight.
"At least it's structurally sound," Kimberly grumbled, following signs on the walls to the ladies bathrooms. The water was still running, even if it came out of the tap red with rust. She splashed her face - she didn't know why, but even filthy tapwater felt better than rainwater on her cheeks.
When she returned to the hall, Fitch was working on the fusebox. It was locked with a fat padlock, but he jammed a screwdriver into the hinges and opened it up like a sardine can. With a length of aluminium foil and a chunk of wood, he built a makeshift fuse and eased it into place with surgical precision.
Kimberly held her breath as the theatre hummed. She could smell the electricity, the ozone crackle on the air.
One by one, the lights popped into life.
"Good enough." Fitch jammed a length of wood up against the door and dusted his hands. "Let's do some spring cleaning, eh?"
They circled the building together and inspected the main stage, peering into the darker corners, sweeping condoms and the remains of syringes into a plastic bag. Kimberly winced as Fitch casually plucked used needles from the floor with his bare hands. "Aren't you worried about diseases?"
"Nothing in here's gonna kill me faster than what's out there."
"What happened to this place, any way?"
"Same thing that happens everywhere else. People forget. You think people in this town need a cute little theatre? People jumping around on a stage dressed like cats?"
"Last time I saw a play was..." Kimberly gnawed her lower lip. "Huis Clos."
"Not familiar. Broadway?"
"Community theatre. Jean-Paul Sartre." Fitch just shook his head. "Have you heard the term, 'hell is other people?'"
"It's come up a couple times."
"That's the play. Three people wake up in hell. They figure they're about to be punished with fire and brimstone, but they realise their true punishment is being trapped together, forever. Sometimes..." Kimberly shuddered. "I got hit by a fucking train, Fitch. I'm supposed to be on a slab. So either I didn't get run over, or I did and someone dragged me off the tracks and brought me here, or I'm dreaming all of this in a coma at Mount Sinai Hospital, or..." She took a deep breath. "Or that train pancaked me, and this is my personal Huis Clos."
Fitch probed in his coat pocket with his left hand. He bent his ear, as if listening to a whisper too low for Kimberly to make out. Then he grinned. "Bullshit."
"You don't think so?"
"No way. Hell was never this damp."
Kimberly snorted. "Should put that on a t-shirt."
"Damn straight. I'm nothing but good ideas. And speaking of..." He pranced across the stage, surprisingly nimble inside his coat, and vanished into the wings. "Best idea I've had so far. Feel like a change of rags?"
Most of what was left in the costume department was moth-eaten all the way down to the roots, but when Kimberly dug through the regency era gowns and the oversized codpieces she found a pair of riding pants and knee-high boots that were only one size too large. Paired with a leather motorcycle jacket she found in a back corner - the shoulders were studded and T-BIRDS was stitched across the back, twelve inches high - she felt almost like a new woman. All she needed was a change of socks and underwear, and she'd be ready to bury her foot up Rustwood's ass.
Fitch sloughed off his filthy clothes in a back room - surprisingly modest, seeing as Kimberly had been living out the back of a car with the man for nearly a week and had seen and smelled almost everything there was to see or smell of a man. When he emerged he'd traded his ripped-up jeans for a pair of corduroy slacks and his nasty old coat for a duster so long it brushed the floorboards.
"You like it?" Fitch twirled on the spot. "Must've done some Philip Marlowe adaptation, that's what I reckon."
"Very fancy. All you need is the hat." Fitch's left hand was deep in the pocket of the duster, and the way the fabric bulged as he wriggled his fingers left Kimberly feeling strangely nauseated. "What've you got in there, anyway?"
Fitch looked down at his hand, then grinned awkwardly. "Just something I do. Better than biting your nails, right?"
"Looks like you're playing with yourself."
"Sticks and stones." Fitch withdrew his hand from his coat pocket and wiped it on his new slacks. "Question is, what do we do now? Not in favour of sitting still. It'd be stupid to wait on our asses until the beast sends more servants after us. No, we've got the advantage. I say we get some petrol and a couple quarts of benzene. Styrofoam packing is easy enough, so all we need are a couple cases of beer, and-"
/>
Benzene. Styrofoam. Kimberly knew those ingredients. Something she'd read long ago. Back when she was still hoping to snag that internship at Penguin, she'd devoured every new Penguin paperback to get in-tune with their publishing habits. Yes, it was a pulpy Vietnam-era novel, the sort that read like a pro-Communist bible, complete with recipes for all the monstrous shit they'd dumped on the jungles of Cambodia.
"You want to make napalm?"
"You're damn right," he replied. "Had a good batch cooking back home, but that's no use to us now."
She understood now why Fitch's right cheek was puckered and blistered. The scars wrought by accidental burns shone clear as greasepaint. "What do you think you're gonna do, burn the doors down?"
"And if that doesn't work, I'll ram them in with the Audi. Piece of shit car, anyway."
"Fitch, are you even listening to yourself? You said you'd get me home, not start a war."
"Believe me," Fitch whispered. "I'll get you back. I'll don't know what the doorway is or how it works, but I'll cut a path to it for you. And once you're back in New York, I'll close that bastard for good and burn the convent down around it." His pupils were tiny, like pencil points, and his lips were flecked with spit. "You're gonna be the last motherfucker this place steals."
There was something in his voice that left Kimberly shuddering. The manic head-toss, the flared nostrils, like he was about to charge across the room in a raving fit. He was wound up so far he was ready to pop. "What about you? If this isn't all bullshit, if there is a real door there... you don't want to go through?"
Fitch shook his head. "This place has claws, lady. They're in me too deep. Always knew I was going to die here, and hell, I probably deserve it. But maybe I can even it out a little if I get you home." He held out one skinny hand - the left hand, the stub of his sixth finger wiggling pathetically. "You help me, I help you. Deal?"
Kimberly shook his hand. This time, she didn't shy away. "Let's make some napalm."
Chapter 7
They'd been partners less than twenty four hours and Detective Chan was already driving Goodwell crazy.
Maybe it was the way she grinned as he stumbled from the Rustwood PD to her car, his mouth still dry and chalky from lack of sleep. Maybe it was how she looked so damn neat, pressed pink shirt beneath sharp black blazer, her nails painted with little blue flower petals, while his slacks were flecked with crumbs and his tie hung loose around his throat, the knot unravelling, like the stereotypical drunkard who'd slept in his clothes. Maybe it was the way she held the door for him, eyes twinkling and patronising as she offered to buckle him in.
"Don't get smart," he grumbled. "Didn't sleep too well."
"Who does, around here? I'm never in bed before two."
"So how come you look so... fresh?"
"Coffee," Chan replied. "Coffee and dark chocolate. Best breakfast for a hard-working girl. So what's your excuse? Troubles with the wife?"
"You married, Chan?"
Chan punched into first, tires spinning on the slick macadam. "Don't have the heart to break anyone else's."
"Then don't comment on mine." Goodwell squinted out the window at the sun, barely visible through storm clouds, dim like a forty-watt bulb behind thick gauze. Another pretty day in Rustwood.
He leaned back and closed his eyes. "Wake me when we get there."
Goodwell hoped he looked calmer than he felt. The day before had twisted him up good and spat him out, left him jittering and sweating. His back teeth hurt. He thought he had a stomach ulcer.
He'd come into the office early to try and work off the tension. Made lots of calls in the pre-dawn hours, when his colleagues weren't around to listen in. Given Kimberly's description to everyone that mattered, all his contacts who weren't police. Friends at coffee bars. The mechanics who owed him a favour. Even Doctor Keller up at St Jeremiah's Hospital. If Kimberly stuck her head up, Goodwell would get the call.
But none of it helped take his mind off the job.
Lucas Kensington. Friend of Dylan, Martin and Taram. He'd been there when Goodwell had arrived under the bridge and ordered the two boys into his car, and even though he'd been stoned senseless at the time there was no telling how much the boy remembered. If he got a bad vibe from Goodwell, if his memory had grown clearer with time...
Goodwell was wishing he'd taken a couple antacid tablets after breakfast. The dream was still weighing on him: pale hands, accusing eyes. Hannah hadn't said a single comforting word. Not that he'd told her the truth, God no. If she knew what was truly going on, if he told her even a fraction of the truth, she'd be out the door in moments.
He couldn't be that cruel. Some things he had to carry alone. He'd known that when the Queen of Rustwood first called him to her cause. That, sometimes, dark things had to be shouldered for the good of all.
He just wished he'd known in advance how heavy those burdens would be.
"Goodwell, you napping on me?"
His eyes snapped open. Chan was clicking her fingers before his eyes. "Shit, you look terrible," Chan said. "Not worth dragging your ass around."
Goodwell coughed, hoping he sounded ill. "Maybe you can do this interview solo. Don't want to give the kid whatever I've got."
"Stop being such a child." She shoved Goodwell out of the car and into the rain. They'd pulled up outside a house of white-washed brick, shabby curtains drawn tight across the windows, a bicycle lying overturned beside wilted geraniums. Two sad-faced garden gnomes with broken fishing rods stared at Goodwell from beneath bushes the colour of ash.
"Cheery place," Goodwell muttered, as they scuttled through the garden. "I love the smell of neglected children in the morning."
"Hilarious. That a new suit?"
"Old one had holes in the elbows."
"Hrm." Detective Chan looked him up and down, appraising. "Looks good on you. Not sure about the stubble, though. Is that regulation?"
"Like you give a shit."
"You look like you're about to go down on Linda Lovelace."
Goodwell rubbed his eyes, hoping the inflammation would appear like sleeplessness and not nerves. "This Lucas kid. He gave a statement already, didn't he? Was it reliable?"
"As reliable as a teenager can be, which is to say, not very much." She rang the doorbell and stepped back, the rain bouncing off the peak of her cloth cap, while Goodwell stayed beneath the eaves. "What, worried the water will ruin your suit?"
"More than that," Goodwell murmured, thinking of the things squirming beneath the soft flesh of Dylan and Taram's eyeballs.
The door creaked open. A worried face peered out: Lucas's mother. "Are you the detectives? Have you found something?"
Badges in hand, Chan and Goodwell stepped inside.
"Lucas. I need you to understand the importance of what we're doing today. The statement you gave us, that was excellent. Very helpful. Now we need you to think hard, think back to that day, and tell us everything you remember."
Lucas was a short boy, brown hair swept back, a single twisty forelock dangling down so far it tickled his chin. Goodwell didn't know whether the kid was channeling Hasidic Judaism or Adam Ant. He didn't recognise the boy, but he'd had other things on his mind that day beneath the bridge.
Now Goodwell had to hope the teenager had been just as inattentive.
"He had a car," Lucas said. "I think it was black."
"Do you remember the type, or model?"
Lucas shook his head. "I'd been, um..." He glanced sideways at his mother, who'd decided to sit in on the interview. She lounged against the living room door, fat arms crossed beneath her tremendous breasts, gaze flitting between Goodwell, Chan and her son.
"Mrs Kensington," Chan said, without taking her eyes off the boy. "Could you give us a private moment?"
"Anything he can say to you, he can say in front of me."
"That's not strictly true, Mrs Kensington. If we feel Lucas is withholding information, we might be forced to take him to the station for a formal interview. I'd
like to avoid that, so if you wouldn't mind..."
Mrs Kensington spluttered but eventually stepped outside. Even so, Goodwell was certain her ear was pressed to the door.
Lucas swallowed hard. "I was high," he finally said. "And kind of drunk."
Goodwell shared a look with Chan: told you so. It didn't seem to register. "We've got more important things on our minds than the dope, son. What did this guy look like? Tall, short? Dark hair, light hair?"
Lucas screwed up his face in concentration. "Medium height," he said. "About as tall as you."
Goodwell's heart stopped for a count of five as the boy pointed at him. "About..." His voice was a bare squeak. He cleared his throat. "About as tall as me. Not a little taller, or shorter?"
"Maybe taller. I was sitting down the whole time, so I don't know. He was wearing a suit, too."
"Like mine?"
"Different. Sort of... old. I don't know."
Sweat slid coolly down the back of Goodwell's neck. "So you don't remember much at all."
Lucas shook his head. "He didn't have a beard or anything. That's it."
Chan broke in. "Would you recognise the man if you saw him again?"
"I, uh, I guess-"
"What about working with a sketch artist? It'd be a big help, Lucas. Enough so that we'd make sure your underage drinking and the dope charges stay off the record. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
Lucas looked ready to cry. "Please don't tell my Mom."
"Did we say we'd do that? Of course not. We're your friends." Chan reached across the table and patted Lucas's hand. "Now, let's go back to the start. The guy pulls up, and..."
Half an hour later, his guts still cinched tight like he'd swallowed shoelaces and battery acid, Goodwell was back outside with Chan. His fingers twitched by his side. Damn, it'd be nice to have a cigarette. Even though he didn't smoke, the thought of sucking that flavour into his lungs, the heat so strong inside him that even the raindrops would steam away when they touched his skin...
Rust: Two Page 6
