The head would be dry for the time being. Not that it mattered. As far as I could tell, Whistler’s all-too-mortal remains were already rotting. It didn’t look like the old boy was going to make a comeback anytime soon, no matter what Spider Ripley or Charles Manson believed. As for me, I didn’t care what kind of shape the head was in. Maggots could nest in Whistler’s mouth, and the head would still be a valuable tool.
I climbed into the truck. Silver needles of rain beat against the windshield, washing away bugs splattered from Los Cabos to Tijuana, San Diego to Bakersfield, Fiddler to Cliffside. I notched the wipers from low to high and the dead things were taken by the storm as I drove toward Hangman’s Point Drive.
I skipped the turnoff and took another road about a quarter mile down the highway. It ran at an angle, back toward Hangman’s Point, though the two roads didn’t intersect.
There was a trailhead at the end of the road, though no one was hiking in this weather. I parked the truck, got out, and trudged along the cliff trail that followed the coastline back to the hanging tree.
The storm was gaining strength. A brutal wind pushed me along, cutting through my clothes. Driving gusts of rain sliced me to the bone. I was soaked through in less than a minute. Another minute, and my guts felt like they were frosted with ice.
But there was nothing I could do about it now. I was wearing the coat I’d stolen from the deputy at Circe’s mansion, and it wasn’t much more than a windbreaker. For a second I wished I’d taken something more substantial from Spider Ripley’s place. But Spider and I weren’t the same size—he was seven feet tall and I was a couple inches under six—and I never much liked black latex, anyway.
Fuck fashion. I would have worn a dead German Shepherd for a coat and a roadkilled Chihuahua for a hat, as long as they’d kept me warm. By the time I reached the tree, I felt like I’d taken a swim in the Arctic Ocean.
One look at the ghostly witches swinging in the gallows tree told me that things could have been a whole lot worse. I did my best to ignore them. Ducking low, I headed for the deadfall piled near the historical marker. I crouched behind the twisted heap of fallen branches, slicked rainwater across my brow with one hand, and watched Janice Ravenwood’s house.
Janice’s Ford Explorer sat in the driveway, along with two other cars—a black Rolls Royce and a Toyota Rav 4.
The storeroom where I’d had my little tussle with Spider Ripley was on the other side of the house, so I hadn’t seen either car when I made my escape. Still, it was a sure bet that the Rolls belonged to Circe. I wasn’t sure about the Rav 4. Maybe it belonged to Spider Ripley.
Or maybe the owner was the man who stood on Janice Ravenwood’s porch, nice and dry, watching the road like a good little soldier. A little red flare ignited near his mouth as he sucked on a cigarette, and at that moment I would have jammed the butt against my palm just to feel some heat.
But it wasn’t the cigarette I wanted. Not really. What I wanted was the man’s coat. Nice and thick and warm, and from the looks of him, just about my size.
I dug into the windbreaker’s left pocket and found Spider Ripley’s cell phone. It was soaked. So was Janice Ravenwood’s business card. But I could still read the number and I punched it in.
Dull ringing shivered against my ear. The cell phone worked fine. Now it was up to me. My teeth started chattering and I clamped my jaw tight, thinking warm thoughts, telling myself I was by a well-stoked fire with a cup of hot soup between my hands —
“Hello?” Janice’s voice was still a little shaky.
I didn’t say anything for a second. I drew my K-bar, studying the gleaming edge that had sliced Janice’s fingers. One touch from those long, slim fingers and she’d told me everything about my knife. Gifted fingers, or cursed…I wondered if our encounter had changed her perspective.
I said, “How’s the hand?”
She gasped.
“Sorry about cutting you. Really. And I’m sorry about your kitchen, too. Some Plastic Wood and plaster, no one will ever know you had a gunfight in your home.”
“Y-you bastard.”
“Yeah, but you knew that yesterday. Or you should have, if you would have had the guts to shake my hand. Anyway, that’s old news. Get Ripley on the line.”
I heard crosstalk in the background as Janice handed over the phone. It sounded like Circe wanted in on the conversation. I didn’t want that. Not yet.
I wanted Spider Ripley, and I got him.
“You’re dead, Saunders,” he said. “I’m gonna carve a map of hell on your face, and I’m gonna do it with your own fuckin’ knife.”
“You just might get your chance, Gilbert.”
“Huh? How did you know my name was—”
“Good Saint Gilbert. That’s what I should call you. Nice place you’ve got here. I especially like the copulating gnomes in the garden, and the sarcophagus bathtub shows a certain panache, but all that late period Egyptian stuff is a little out of step with the Sunday school you’ve got on the third floor.”
“You’re at my fucking house?”
“I’m at your fucking pyramid, Gilbert. I came for something that belongs to me, and I found it.”
“Don’t be stupid, Saunders. You don’t know what you’re messing with. You’d better leave Whistler’s head alone.”
“Leave it alone? Shit, Gilbert, I already let it out of the box. In fact, Diabolos is dying to talk to you. Here, let me get him on the line
Ripley swore some more. I sighed. The big guy was getting excited. Yelling. In the background, Circe was getting excited, too. Asking questions, trying to figure out what the hell her bodyguard was so worked up about.
A quick glance at Janice’s porch told me that the guard was distracted by the uproar. He stared through the cottage window, trying to see if there was something going on inside the house that should worry him.
I could only take so much. “Take a Midol, Gilbert,” I said finally. “And hand the phone to your boss.”
Circe came on the line. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but it isn’t going to work.”
“Oh, I think it’s working just fine. I don’t know about your daddy, though. When he wakes up, I’ll ask him.”
“That head is a hunk of dead meat. It doesn’t mean a thing to me. Spider was supposed to get rid of it.” The next part seemed more for Gilbert’s ears than mine. “If he’d followed orders and fed the damn thing to the Dobermans like he was supposed to—”
“Like you told me—good help is hard to find. Spider didn’t do what he was told. Your guard dogs had to stick to Puppy Chow. So now we’re back to square one.”
She sighed. “I have a feeling we’re going to talk about money again.”
“You’re right,” I said, even though I didn’t give a damn about the money anymore.
But I couldn’t let Circe know that, so I said the things she expected me to say. “I have your father’s head, and it’s for sale. If you pay up, I’m willing to forget the way you tried to screw me. I’ll be on my way, and no one will be the wiser.”
“There’s no reason for me to pay you one fucking dime.”
“Then maybe I should call someone else. Say a few reporters. I’m sure they’d be real interested to discover that you aren’t holed up in a mansion in San Francisco. I’m sure they’d be just as interested to find your father’s head in a pyramid owned by a guy you’re fucking. I’m sure they’d hustle right over here to Spider’s place. Even that crew from CNN.”
“Do your worst. I can cover anything if I have to.”
“Maybe you can, but you don’t want to. I know that, and so do you. So don’t treat me like Gilbert Fucking Ripley. He may be fool enough to think you won’t sell him out, but I’m not that stupid. Neither are you. You nearly dug my grave. I can return the favor. You don’t want to play that kind of game with me.”
She didn’t say a word.
“Good,” I said. “I think you’re wising up. Now listen to me, and listen very closely. I want you and
Gilbert to go to your estate. I want you to do that right now. I’ll call you in an hour with my price, and with instructions for paying it. As long as you don’t do anything stupid—like call the cops—we’ll make our trade and get on with our lives.”
“Cops are overrated. Yesterday I learned that the hard way, and I don’t believe in second chances. This time, it’s just me and you.”
“Now you’re being smart. You do what you’re told, and we’ll both get clear of this. You don’t, and I’ll haunt you like a fucking ghost.”
I cut her off before she could say another word.
The whole thing was a smokescreen, of course.
For the first time in my life, money was useless to me.
The dead don’t spend dollars.
I couldn’t ransom a little girl’s ghost.
* * *
Shivering, I watched the cottage.
A minute passed. Another, and another. Just as I was starting to worry, the front door banged open. Circe and Spider hurried to the Rolls. Janice hollered after them, but they ignored her.
Car doors slammed. The Rolls roared alive and fishtailed onto Hangman’s Point Drive.
Janice was understandably upset. She obviously needed to vent. She screamed at the bodyguard, nice and warm in his big coat, but he only shrugged and flicked his cigarette butt into the rain.
Janice stomped into the house and slammed the door behind her.
My teeth started chattering again. The bodyguard lit another cigarette. The crimson end flared like a target.
* * *
A few minutes later, I hit the redial button on Spider’s cell phone.
Janice’s phone rang for quite a while. I let it ring. Janice probably didn’t much like telephones anymore. I figured she needed to work up her courage before she answered, the same way you work up your courage before you stick your hand into a lion’s mouth.
I watched the house. I tried to be patient.
Finally, a familiar click.
A handset wrestled from its cradle.
A hand entering a lion’s mouth.
Janice said, “H-hello?”
“They left you all alone, didn’t they?”
“N-no. I’m not alone. I’ve got protection—”
I chuckled. “You mean the guard on the porch?”
“How do you know…how do you know where he is?”
I tossed the dead guard through the window.
“I know where he is.” I stepped over the sill and over the corpse. “Now we both know where he is.”
Janice stared down at the corpse’s broken nose. It was tilted at a piggish slant, with the bone rammed into his brainpan.
Janice didn’t move. She couldn’t move.
Until I told her to.
I pointed the K-Bar at the dead man. “Strip him,” I said. “Give me his clothes. Especially that coat.”
She did, and it didn’t take her long. It wasn’t the kind of work you wanted to linger over if you were Janice Ravenwood, if every scrap of clothing you touched coughed up a dark panorama of psychic impressions.
I changed quickly. The guy was a little bigger than me, but the fit was close enough. Apart from a little blood on the shirt, the clothes were dry. That was what mattered most.
I didn’t care about a little blood. As far as I was concerned they were my clothes now. The dead man didn’t need them. Neither did his ghost—a dark, thin shadow that cowered outside, howling in the rain.
I ignored the dead man’s screams.
The coat felt good, and warm.
“How do I look?” I asked.
“F-fine,” Janice said.
“Great. Now get a coat for yourself, or rain gear if you’ve got it. I don’t want you to get wet.”
“Where are we going?”
“Across the River Styx,” I said. “Just the two of us.”
5
The rain fell harder now, sheeting across the highway. The storm was getting worse, and it showed no sign of letting up anytime soon. No way did I want to rely on a busted-up Toyota that had been to hell and back when Janice’s new Ford Explorer was ripe for the taking.
The self-important scribbler didn’t need it now. I was doing the driving. Janice rode shotgun, though that was a laugh. She wouldn’t have touched a gun if one lay in her lap. She was that scared.
Maybe she was scared enough to tell the truth.
“I was supposed to be Circe’s ghostwriter, if you can believe that,” Janice began. “She had an offer in the high six figures from a publisher who wanted her autobiography, and she handpicked me to write it. How could I refuse? Slice up a pie like that, there was plenty left for me. My agent negotiated the deal and managed to make it a little sweeter. In fact, she bumped us over the million dollar mark. When it came to Circe Whistler, she said there was a lot more money in channeling the living than channeling the dead.”
“Celebrities sell,” I said.
“All I wanted was the money.”
“There are lots of ways to make money.”
“You’re right. If you can kill people and and cut off their heads, I’m sure the job offers just roll right in.”
“Spare me the wounded sarcasm. You’re a smart woman. I’m not much on metaphysics, but I read a chapter from one of your books. You can write.”
“You know how hard it is to sell a book?” Janice asked, and it wasn’t the kind of question that called for an answer. “It’s hard. I know. I couldn’t sell my first two. I had to publish them myself. I lost money on both of them. If it wasn’t for my gift, I would have starved.”
Her talented hands rested on her thighs, silver bracelets gathered like manacles. I knew Janice wasn’t lying about her powers. When it came to psychic impressions from physical objects, I had no doubt that she was the real deal. She had to be. One touch from her fingers and she’d known all about my knife and the things I had done with it. There was no way she could beg, borrow, or steal that information from anyone on earth, living or dead.
But with a wild talent like that, I didn’t understand how money could have been a problem for her. “Seems to me that you could have made plenty of money with your powers alone,” I said.
“Sure. But people don’t want to know the truth. Not really. They can’t take it. The truth isn’t worth a dime. It’s ugly. Pretty lies are the things that sell.”
“And you sold more than your share.”
“That’s right. Pretty lies were my stock and trade. Bring me a couple grand and your dead husband’s pipe, and I’d give you a show. I’d sit you down in a cozy little new-age parlor in front of a roaring fire, and I’d hold that pipe in my hands, and I’d close my eyes as if I were closing them for the very last time. I’d pretend to contact my spirit guide, Natasha Orlovsky, one of the Cliffside witches. Never mind that Natasha was never a witch at all, just a scared teenager who was hanged as a result of mass hysteria. Never mind that I’d never seen Natasha’s ghost, or that the Natasha I pretended to conjure up was a recycled character from a historical horror novel I sold under a pen name for a quick two grand.
“Never mind any of that. I’d close my eyes, and I’d smile, and I’d whisper a few lines of college Russian. Then I’d tell my client what she wanted to hear, whispering in soothing tones that her dear departed husband was so happy in the afterlife, so glad that his widow had remarried that nice fellow who owned the hardware store, so pleased that she’d spent that extra fifteen hundred bucks for a burial plot near a fountain because listening to those sweet little songbirds splashing around sure did make his eternal slumber a lot more comfortable.
“If that was what the old lady wanted to hear, that was what I’d tell her. And I’d hold on to her dead husband’s pipe, even though holding it was like swallowing poison. I’d think of the two grand the old lady had in her purse—the same amount of money I got for a horror novel that took four months of solid work to write. And while I thought of the old lady’s money and how fast I was going to make it mine, I co
uld almost taste the dead man’s tobacco in my mouth, and I could almost feel that rough little lump growing inside my cheek, the one that turned into a cancer that the doctors hacked off along with a good chunk of jawbone.
“I’d feel the dead man’s hate as his wife pretended she needed something from the hardware store, when he knew she only wanted to cry on the shoulder of the cross-eyed bastard who owned the place. I’d feel all of it, just the way the dead man had felt it.
“In a finger snap, I’d live the day his wife came home with the news that the cross-eyed bastard was hiring her twenty hours a week. She hated to go to work, but she didn’t see how they could turn down the income. And she was right about that. They did need money. He couldn’t work anymore. Hell, no one wanted to go to a barber who was missing half his face.
“So he wasn’t going to stop her from working. Or blowing the cross-eyed son of a bitch in the back room. Or whatever else she was getting paid to do. Because with her out of the house he could spend the long afternoons sucking on his pipe with the little asshole mouth the doctors had left him. Holding that sweet smoke in his mouth while he imagined his wife bent over a display of garbage disposals, giving it up for the cross-eyed bastard she’d marry as soon as she buried his cancer-ridden corpse in a boneyard with a fountain that attracted flocks of birds which would no doubt shit all over his tombstone at every opportunity.”
Janice drew a deep breath and held it. If she wanted to confess, I’d let her. Maybe the time had come.
“That was why you didn’t shake my hand when we first met,” I said. “And why you didn’t want to touch the backpack.”
“I can’t stand to touch anything anymore. That’s what ruined me as a medium. After a while I couldn’t hold the pain, and smile, and tell those pretty lies. It started to burn me down. I knew I had to make a change.”
“What about your third book? It was a big hit, wasn’t it? You must have seen some money from that.”
“And I earned every penny. To make the kind of sales my publisher expected, I had to do a book tour. That meant dozens of interviews, and lots of people wanting to test me.”
Wildest Dreams Page 9
