“I know,” Mary admitted. She wanted to hate herself, but she knew that it was the right thing.
In the blackness behind her eyes the dark voice growled low.
Dooley rose and walked around the piano until he stood beneath the arched opening to the living room. “Thank you.”
Mary sensed the finality in his appreciation. Dreaded it, actually. “You’re leaving?”
Dooley turned and walked toward the front door. “I should.”
“But the roads,” Mary warned him, his hand already on the coat closet doorknob. “They’re going to be awful. You can’t drive down the mountain in this weather.”
Dooley moved the bastard curtain aside. The night outside was white, both air and earth, but far from impenetrable. As the curtain slipped back he glimpsed the glass slivers again.
When Dooley turned back to Mary she fronted concern as best she could, but he had seen through fronts before, often on a daily basis. Usually lies lay beyond the veil. Here he saw desperation.
“What?” Mary said after his gaze grew long, penetrating.
Dooley gestured toward the curtain. “What happened to the window?”
His knowing dissolved her charade. Her eyes sought solace and considered the precise meeting of wall and ceiling, and the crown molding that racetracked the junction, artful in its being, yet beyond reach.
“Did Chuck Edmond come back?”
“I didn’t know he’d been released,” Mary said after a moment. A tremor lay under her words, like a lazy snake reluctant to strike.
“Did he break it?” Dooley pressed for specificity.
“I didn’t physically see him. But it was him.”
Dooley did not doubt that, but his belief would not be enough for either the Bartlett PD or the County Sheriff to yank Chuckie boy back into a cage. “I’ll call and have the sheriff’s department send out a car.”
“No. Please.”
“What if he comes back? He’s smashed enough things, Mary. You may be next.”
She shook her head. “I’m not going to have everyone thinking that the Edmonds have gotten to me, be it Chuck and his temper or Nate Edmond with his lawyer. A police car in front of my house for a second time in a week is too much satisfaction to give them.” She wanted to say that they should have been as energetic when she’d tried to get them to deal with their youngest when he first became a problem, but wants were wishes now, and wishes were worth little more than the breath that spoke them, or the thoughts that conjured them. “Please stay. I want to sleep tonight. I want to know I’m safe.”
Dooley slid his hands in his pockets. Chester came into the room and arched his back against Mary’s legs, his tail tracing erratic lines in the air about her knees. “It’s too bad he’s not a Doberman.”
“The couch is comfortable,” Mary said. “As comfortable as a couch can be, I suppose. Or you can have my bed and I’ll sleep out here.”
“By the window?” Dooley offered, shaking his head. He succumbed with a smile and patted the arm of the couch. “As comfortable as couches get.”
“Thank you,” she said from across the living room, her body teetering toward Dooley, verging on motion that would take her to him. Chester circled her legs like a wagon master mustering the buckboards and canvas-tops for the night. “I’ll get you a pillow and blankets.”
Dooley watched her disappear into the hall, fear her burden, hate her burden, loyalty her burden. She was cursed by what was hers, and what belonged to others. A pang tickled low in his gut when she came back into the room and handed him the bedding, her eyes thanking him again with no words to clutter the exchange. Low and almost forgotten the sensation was. He hadn’t felt that in a very long time, and when he placed it in time and place he told himself that it was not that. Wasn’t that. Was not that.
He watched her leave him and close the door to her bedroom, then stepped out of his shoes and snapped the blanket open. He twisted the lamp switch off and covered himself as he lay. Snow patted at the porch outside, falling beyond with a soft, breathy hiss, shushing the night.
Dooley listened and stared at the ceiling, his head turning toward a blade of radiance slicing into the living room as Mary’s door opened just a crack. She passed in front, then the light went off and bedsprings moaned.
He laced his fingers behind his head and closed his eyes. Chester mewed loudly a few minutes later but Dooley was fast asleep.
* * *
Scream. A scream? Why am I screaming?
Dooley tossed to his side, his unconscious psyche trying to make heads or tails of the little matter that he was screaming. No beast was chasing him in a dream, no free fall without a parachute was terrorizing him. Soon the unconscious surrendered to the nearly conscious, and that quickly to the drowsy, and then it became clear that there was no scream in any dream of his.
There was a scream for real. His eyes snapped open.
Mary was screaming. Screaming bloody murder.
Dooley bolted up and instinctively grabbed his pistol. He knocked the coffee table askew as he ran for her bedroom and shoulder-blocked the door open. His free hand reached out for the wall where a light switch should be, and it was there, but the small plastic lever was already up.
“NO! NO! CAN’T! CAN’T!”
He focused on the bed, but Mary was not there. The sheets, though, were drawn haphazardly over the far side of the mattress. He abandoned the light and ran around the foot of the four-poster.
“NO! GET IT——!” Mary crouched on the floor, in a near fetal position, knees to the hardwood and her face buried in the covers. “OH GOD! CAN’T! OH! OH!”
Dooley put his weapon on the bureau and eased to the floor near her feet. “Mary. Mary.”
“OH! GOD!” She yelled, then convulsed into a bucking fit of dry heaves, her back arching like a cat, the screams now hollow nothings that spilled invisibly from her gaping mouth.
“Mary,” he said, and put a hand to the small of her back.
She rolled suddenly onto her back like a wrestler whipped around for a pin, and struck out with her feet toward Dooley.
“Mary! Mary!” He blocked the flailing legs and yelled as loud as he could, “MARY!”
Her feet stabbed a few times more at him, then pulled back, her arms wrapping her legs as she reclined, gasping, against a nightstand.
“It’s Dooley, Mary. Dooley. Okay?”
Ragged breaths were the only answer to his inquiry for a moment, then Mary whimpered, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right,” he said, and touched her bare foot gently. “You were having a nightmare. That’s all.”
She breathed hard and fast, orienting herself a bit more to the waking state and the man very near telling her that everything was all right.
“It was a bad dream,” Dooley repeated. “Just a dream.”
Her head moved in a slow nod, tears streaking her face, but in her startled state she was unable to remember a dream, or dreaming.
“A dream,” he said one more time, his hand rubbing circles on her foot. “You’re okay.”
“I’m okay.”
He nodded. “You’re just fine.”
Mary reached down and took her hand in his, her thumb rolling softly over his knuckles. Just a bad dream, she told herself, whether that had been it or not. That’s all. A bad dream.
And what do we do with bad things?
We forget them.
“I’m okay.”
He helped her back into bed and covered her up. When he left the room she asked him to leave the door wide open. The sound of her breathing one room away lulled him, but he slept no more that night.
Seventeen
Joel Bauer arrived at the diner just after eight and found Dooley in a corner booth watching the plows scrape along Roman Boulevard.
“Hey,” Joel said in greeting. He sat and snatched up a menu from between boats of jam. “You found the place. Did you order?”
Dooley shook his head and sipped
at the coffee that had been poured mere seconds after he’d arrived. “I was waiting for you. My mother raised a polite son.”
A wrinkled old waitress, thin as a wisp, quick stepped to their booth and drew an order pad from her black apron. “Morning, Joel. The usual?”
“Steak and eggs with home fries,” Joel confirmed. “And a coke.”
Dooley gave his companion a look. “With breakfast?”
Joel shrugged and fiddled with a packet of creamer. “It’s caffeine.”
“And you, sir?” the waitress prompted Dooley.
“Same as him, no potatoes, and the eggs scrambled dry.” There was nothing worse that a mouthful of eggs that reminded one more of embryos than food. “And just coffee for me.”
The waitress scribbled on her pad and retreated behind the long counter that faced into the kitchen. She ripped their order off the pad and stuck it under a clip on a shiny silver wheel suspended above the glowing food warmers. Unseen hands spun it and Dooley heard eggs cracking into a bowl, and likely cheap meat hissing as it hit the griddle.
“We had a good dump of snow last night,” Joel said. “Why did you want to drive all the way out here to tell me something? You couldn’t tell me when you called?”
“I couldn’t talk,” Dooley said. “And I didn’t drive in. I stayed here last night.”
“You did? Usually the truckers get all the rooms when we have a good storm.”
“I stayed at Mary Austin’s house.”
Joel considered that silently as his coke arrived. When the waitress left he said, “You did what?”
“I was talking to her, the weather was shitty, and she asked me to stay.”
“Asked?” Joel reacted. “Not ‘offered’?”
Dooley held his hand over his coffee and said, “You’d better rein in Chuck Edmond.”
“Why?”
“He’s breaking more glass.”
“Where? At her place?”
Dooley nodded. “She didn’t eyeball him doing it.”
“The little bastard,” Joel swore quietly. “Not one of them are any good. You should see their school records sometime. Nature or nurture, that family is messed up both ways.”
“She was frightened. That’s why I stayed.”
Dooley looked away far too quickly for Joel to believe that completely. “She’s a material part of this case.”
“She’s a person who’s being terrorized,” Dooley countered, an imaginary Proceed With Caution sign tagged to his words.
Another time, Joel decided. Let it lay for now. “What were you talking to her about?”
“Talking to the kids.”
“I thought you weren’t having any luck.”
Dooley shook his head. “Her talking to them. They trust her.”
“And?”
“And she said she’d do it.”
“She will,” Joel responded, surprised. “I thought she believed in some lawyer-client privilege sort of thing with them.”
“I think she just doesn’t want them to get hurt.”
A straw clung to the sweating glass of soda before Joel. He peeled the paper from the slender red and white tube and stabbed it through the thick layer of crushed ice floating at the top. “Why is she doing this for you?”
“She’s not doing it for me,” Dooley disagreed.
Joel drew on his soda through the straw and nodded. “I asked her, other people asked her. Why now and not then?”
“Do you want me to tell her not to?” Dooley asked, irritated.
“No,” Joel said. He puckered on the straw and sucked half an inch from the glass. Let this go, too, he told himself, and be glad the teacher was going to help. “We’re running some scenarios tomorrow to clear up some of the time problems.”
“You’re reenacting it?”
“Just for the time stuff from statements. When did the office first hear? Was anyone on the phone so we can pinpoint the time? Blah, blah, blah.” Joel stirred the ice with his straw. “You’re welcome to be there.”
“I have a commitment,” Dooley said. A commitment? He wondered if it was best to think of it as that, and not something he wanted to do. The difference between washing a Ferrari and driving one, he figured.
“No problem. I’ll fill you in.”
“I’m going to drop by the school on my way home,” Dooley said.
“It’s Saturday.”
“Exactly why I’m going. It should be deserted.”
Joel didn’t get it. “You want to walk around an empty school?”
“I just want to see where he died without a bunch of kids traipsing by.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Dooley smiled and shook his head. “I’m not dancing on the spot or anything.”
“You probably wouldn’t be the first if you did,” Joel commented.
A few minutes passed and their breakfast arrived, a different waitress making the delivery.
Dooley had the bottle of hot sauce in hand before he saw the runny mass of yellow and white oozing around the steak. “Excuse me.”
The waitress looked back over one shoulder as she walked away. Her face was tired, the tired he remembered in his mother’s expression. Worn but not beaten. A proud tired.
In this woman an angry tired.
“I asked for scrambled dry,” Dooley said evenly.
The woman turned to face him now, arms crossing defiantly below smallish breasts. Over the left one ‘Vick’ was embroidered. “Those are as dry as you’re getting. If you don’t like ‘em...”
Dooley looked, dumbfounded, to Joel as the waitress disappeared behind the dining counter. “What the hell was that?”
Joel scooped a forkful of home fries into his mouth and half mumbled, “That was Vicki Allenton.”
Dooley’s eyes dropped to the contents of his plate, warmed over chicken embryos and fatty beef. He was no longer hungry. “Wonderful.”
“You haven’t made friends with their parents,” Joel observed.
Dooley tossed his paper napkin onto his plate and slid out of the booth. “Remember when I told you I might hate you when this was all over?”
Joel chewed as he looked up, waiting.
“I over estimated the time,” Dooley said. He walked out of Happy Jack’s Grill into the cold, clearing morning, leaving the check for the man who’d brought him into this.
* * *
It took Joey twenty-five minutes to get to her house. Cutting through Galloway’s Orchard would have gotten him there in ten.
It was where she lived, actually. Not a house. Not a house by a long shot.
Joey stopped just short of the long, muddy driveway that, when it rained or the snow melted, spilled itself onto Olympia Street. Already the previous night’s early blast of winter was dissolving, gouging long, vein-like ruts in the earthen track, carrying what it chewed loose away in a flow that approached the color and consistency of a thin gravy. The mild brown torrent washed past Joey, swishing waves over the black toes of his rubbers, and joined the larger stream of snowmelt racing down the gutter.
She lives here, Joey thought, his eyes moving over the six unit apartment building from one depressing feature to the next. Three doors on the bottom floor faced a muddy circle of earth that, in some deluded dream, might be termed a courtyard. A broken tricycle, its left rear wheel missing and nowhere to be seen, lay on its side just about where the ‘courtyard’ narrowed and became the driveway. Two old truck tires leaned against the side of the building. Joey could imagine the kids that must live here twisting themselves into the centers and having their friends roll them down the driveway’s incline to Olympia. It would be a heck of a ride, he thought. A pretty good time.
And then what?
The sadness of no answer to his question to himself spurred him on. He began to walk up the driveway, sloshing through the dirty melt with each step. PJ’s apartment was number 3, the farthest door on the bottom floor, right below number 6. The landing for the upstairs apartments was also a covering of sort
s for the minor stoop that rose just one step up from ground level. To Joey it looked like the landing was sagging. As he drew closer he thought the whole building was leaning.
He found himself shocked by what he was seeing. It was his first time here, though he had tried once before to come. Tried, but had been stopped.
At the top of the driveway, looking left beyond the building, Joey could see the orchard’s gray tentacles poking through the thinning blanket of white, clawing naked at the morning sky. He stopped and listened, and when he heard laughter the skin beneath his warm clothes broke into a million little bumps, and the chill that he’d felt tingling his nose and cheeks on the walk over now seemed hot compared to the frigid wave trickling over him. His breath stopped momentarily, choked off midway down his throat, the laughter growing louder and multiplying, almost echoing as if there was more than one terrible mouth spitting the sound. Definitely more than one, Joey realized, his thoughts swimming now, eyes locked on the orchard’s slumbering growth. More than one laugh, and not from in there. Not from in the—
“Joey?”
He turned fast toward the voice. The voice he knew. The voice he’d know in a dark forest with a storm raging all around.
“What are you doing here?” PJ asked from her open front door, a gaggle of five little ones coming around from the back of the building and passing between her and Joey at a dead run, giddy laughter chasing them as they chased each other.
Joey’s eyes followed the children, none of whom could have been more than six, as they ran off, the lot of them disappearing into the orchard after a moment, laughing all the way.
“Joey?” PJ repeated, stepping onto the cement slab that was her porch, drawing her arms tight across her front, high enough to cover the budding breasts beneath her thin tee shirt. Her only bra was with her mom, who was stopping at the laundromat after her breakfast shift. “Is something wrong?”
Something inside did the unseen equivalent of slapping him across the face, and instantly his thoughts turned from the odd laughter which had been the laughter of the living, left that fuzzing interlude completely behind and seized the sight of PJ. Standing there in the cold, in bare feet, her toes doing a dance all their own, curling up from contact with the icy stoop. Her brown hair pulled back, her green eyes clear and almost frightened as they considered him. Her lips thin and pink. Everything perfect, Joey thought. Everything perfect. “No,” he said, his head shaking. “Nothing’s wrong.”
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