Grant sat down at the table across from the young woman. She was looking at her hands, locked in a prayerful grip on the top of the table, as if she had never seen them before.
“I haven’t seen you in . . . what, two weeks?” Grant said, mustering his soothing cop voice. He knew he was pretty drunk, but was able to overcome it. He tried to lighten his tone and gave a small smile. “What’s bothering you? Besides everything, that is?”
The girl continued to stare at her hands on the table. It was obvious she was trying to bring herself to say something, so Grant continued his monologue.
“I know what you’re going through, Marianne. I lost my wife a few years ago. That hole still hasn’t filled up completely. But it does get better, I can tell you from experience.”
She was still fighting with herself.
“I . . . heard about your pregnancy, of course,” Grant went on. “As you probably know, the DNA results on Bud Ganley were negative.”
This was the spot where, like it or not, he would have to harden his voice a little. “You obviously did have relations with someone that night, Marianne. What I have to ask you is a hard question: who was it?”
Her eyes darted up from her hands, and Grant saw that they were filled with terror. For a moment, darker thoughts than Marianne Carlin’s private life assaulted him.
“Detective—”
Her hands were trembling, now, and when he reached over to steady them they were cold as winter.
“Don’t say anything yet.”
He abruptly got up and went to the coffee machine. The cycle wasn’t finished yet but he yanked the carafe out and poured a cup for her anyway. He pushed the carafe back into its place and noted the spilled coffee hissing on the hot plate beneath it.
He wanted very much to go back to the basement and get his bottle of scotch. But after putting the steaming mug down in front of Marianne and taking a step toward the cellar door, he abruptly turned back and poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Milk or sugar?” he asked the young woman.
Her teeth chattering, she answered, “Milk, p-p-please.”
He yanked open the refrigerator door, pulled out a quart of 2 percent milk, let the door close.
He sat down in front of his own black coffee, pushing the milk carton over to Marianne. When she made no move to open it, he did so himself, pouring it into her mug.
“Say when.”
She focused on him, not on the coffee.
“Someone in a black cape with a white face was in my bedroom tonight,” she said in a rushed, terrorized voice.
It might as well have been shouted through a loudspeaker. Grant dropped the milk carton, which hit the table and began to spill. He stared at it for a moment and then reached out and righted it.
Oh, God. Weird shit.
Marianne’s eyes had never left his face.
To take his mind off of what she had said, he grabbed a dish towel from its rack behind him and sopped up the spillage with it. His mind was tightening and loosening like a fist.
Samhain.
When he was finished he tossed the wet towel into the sink and sat back down. She was staring at him with a pleading look in her eyes.
“Just tell me what happened,” Grant said.
She did, every detail, and Grant’s faint hope that she might have been delusional, or worse, faded.
“Detective Grant, what’s happening to me?”
He opened his mouth to speak, thinking of a hundred ways to answer her question, but then said nothing. Mustering all of his cop’s resources, he forced his lips into the same small smile he had showed her at the beginning of the interview.
“Drink some of your coffee. Believe me, there’s nothing to worry about.”
Like hell there isn’t.
For a brief moment, her face showed relief. “You know what I saw? I’m not crazy?”
With all of his effort, he made his smile widen. “The last thing you are is crazy. I’ve seen this kind of thing before in Orangefield. For now, I just want you to forget about it.”
“Really?” Her voice was filled with something like hope. “I called my sister, and she said it sounded like a Sam Sighting. She was laughing when she said it. But I heard—Janet heard—that you’ve been involved with this kind of thing before. The trouble at the Gates farm—”
It took all of his effort not to scream. “Leave it to me, Marianne. I’ll look into it for you. If it makes you feel any better, other people in Orangefield have reported the same kind of thing you have.”
And almost all of them ended up dead.
Her hands had stopped trembling, and were cradling her coffee cup.
His forced smile widened even more. “You’ll do what I say?”
She suddenly nodded. “All right. But what was that thing I saw?”
His smile was locked into place, and he let his tired eyes crinkle in what may have looked like merriment. “It may be something, or nothing at all. Let’s call it a ‘Sam Sighting’ for now, if you want.”
In all innocence, she said, “What if I keep seeing it?”
“Just . . . don’t worry. It won’t hurt you.”
A lie. You don’t know that.
“Do you feel better now?” he asked.
She looked down at her coffee cup, nearly empty, and nodded, then smiled. “Better than I have in . . . a while. Thank you, Detective Grant. I . . . usually end up talking to my sister, and she’s . . . well, a bit overbearing.”
Grant forced himself to laugh in concurrence.
“Are you seeing a doctor?” he asked.
“Doctor Williams.”
Grant nodded. “I know him. That’s good, Marianne.”
Without realizing it, he had risen and was ushering her out of the house. At the front door he stopped her and gently took her arm.
“If you need me, anytime, night or day, call me.” He fished one of his ever-present business cards out of his wallet and gave it to her. “All the numbers are on there, at the station, home and cell. Don’t hesitate. I’ll . . . protect you, Marianne.”
“Protect me?”
He forced a smile back onto his face. “Don’t worry. I’ll call you to make sure you’re all right.”
She took the card and suddenly raised herself on her toes and pecked him lightly on the cheek.
“Thank you, Detective.”
“I need to ask you one more time, Marianne. Are you absolutely sure it was your husband with you that night?”
Her eyes were unblinking. “Yes.”
“All right.”
She was out the door and gone into the night.
He closed the door, locked it.
Samhain.
Ignoring the dirty cups in the kitchen, the coffee still warming which would taste bitter in the morning, he stumbled to the basement stairs and forced his feet to descend them. He sat in his lounge chair and, after looking at the curtained casement window, stared at the television. Stagecoach on AMC had been replaced by another, inferior western, riddled with commercials he didn’t even register.
Weird shit.
Slowly, methodically, he emptied the Dewar’s bottle, hammering himself down into sleep, and false peace.
ELEVEN
“Bud?”
The voice was deep, not at all friendly, and Bud Ganley didn’t even bother to stick a hand out from underneath the truck and give the finger. After all, he was earning a buck now, and didn’t owe anyone anything. This clown could wait. If it was a cop, screw ’im, if it was a customer, screw ’im, too. Whoever it was, he could talk to the boss, Jim Ready. Bud was just the hired help.
“Bud Ganley?”
“Eff off,” Bud said from beneath the truck, continuing to work on mounting the rebuilt engine. He’d been sloppy with the chains and the block and tackle, he knew, but if he got it in place soon everything would be fine. If he didn’t have this truck finished and ready to go today, Ready would really fire him for sure.
“I’d like to ta
lk to you, Bud.”
“I said—” Ganley began to snarl, but suddenly it became very dark around him and he was no longer beneath the truck in Ready’s Garage.
“What the—”
“I was polite, and that didn’t work. So, now I’m not polite.”
It was so dark he thought he was in the middle of the woods somewhere. But it had been broad daylight, eleven-thirty in the morning, almost lunchtime, so this couldn’t be . . .
He tentatively reached up and felt the engine block, swinging slightly on its chain cradle, above him.
“Jesus, I’m blind!”
“And dumb, and deaf as well, Bud. I’ve watched you for a long time, but never been much interested in you until now.”
“I can’t see!”
“You’ll see again. Don’t worry about that.”
Now there was something in front of him in the darkness, where the engine block should be—a swirling black thing that came closer and then hovered above his face. He saw something rise out of the folds of black—a pasty face with no eyes and a smiling red mouth.
“Let’s talk, Bud.”
“Who the hell—”
“I’m someone who wants to talk.”
“What do you want?” Ganley said in a panic.
“I want to know if you planned on seeing Marianne Carlin again.” The thin red mouth added with emphasis, “And I want you to tell me the truth.”
“Yeah, sure, why not? I mean, her old man’s gone now, right? Why shouldn’t I see her? Who knows, she may fall for me yet, right?”
“Didn’t you try to . . . hurt her once?”
“What are you, some sort of cop trick machine? Is Grant in there behind the costume?”
The thing looked for a moment as if it were going to laugh, then the red lips became straight and grim.
“How would you feel about leaving Orangefield, Bud?”
“What! Eff you! I’ve lived here all my life! No way!”
“What if I asked you to leave, and never come back, and never think about Marianne Carlin again?”
“Christ! Now I know Grant’s in that costume! Eff you, Detective! You can’t tell me what to do and I don’t listen to anybody but me!”
“That’s what I thought. You’ve always been that way, and I’m sure you always will be. Thank you for talking, Bud, and thank you for your honesty.”
“Eff you!”
The black thing with the white face was gone. Now the blackness dissolved around Ganley, as if someone pulled a blindfold away. He saw the engine above him at the exact moment it slipped its chains and fell toward him.
He got out one puppylike squeal before it hit.
TWELVE
“Thanks for seeing me, Doc.”
Williams smiled his crusty old doctor’s smile. “Country doctors always like seeing their old patients, Bill. I miss Rose a lot. I remember all those bridge games years ago—”
Grant cut the doctor off before he could go into one of his ten-minute reminiscence sessions.
“Doc, I’m here to talk about Marianne Carlin.” Williams’ long, hound dog face formed a frown. He rubbed his chin. “Well, gee, Bill, we might be getting into doctor-patient confidentiality areas there—”
“I already know she’s pregnant,” Grant said. He wanted to reach for a cigarette but thought better of it here in Williams’ office. Out in the hallway a nurse stopped at a doorway directly opposite and slid a form into a plastic holder mounted on the wall. A moment later she ushered a woman and a young, sniffling child into the room and closed the door after them. She gave a quick glance into the office and nodded at Williams.
“I’ll be there in a minute, Martha.”
The nurse nodded again and walked briskly away.
Williams leaned back in his desk chair and put his hands behind his head. “If you know she’s pregnant, then why are we having this conversation?”
Grant said, “I need to know if she’s really pregnant.”
Williams frowned again, then nodded. “You mean an hysterical pregnancy, something like that?”
“Right.”
The doctor scratched his cheek, rubbed his chin, looked at the ceiling. “Well, then, once more we enter that gray area, Bill . . .”
“It’s important. I think she may have been raped the night her husband was killed. I thought it was Bud Ganley, but a DNA test cleared him.”
“Bud Ganley.” Williams frowned. “I just got off the phone with the coroner not twenty minutes ago about Bud Ganley.”
“What about him?” Grant asked. The hair on the back of his neck began to prickle.
“He’s dead, Bill. Surprised you haven’t heard about it yet. Truck engine slipped its block and tackle chains while he was mounting it from below, crushed his head like, well, you provide the image. Grape, tomato, whatever. I was on duty at Orangefield General earlier today when they brought him in.” He made a sour face. “If it had been yesterday, would have been my friend Gus Bellow instead of me looking at him. Wish it had been.”
“Is his body still at Orangefield General?”
“Probably transferred it to the funeral home by now. He’ll be in the ground in a few days. Won’t be much of a wake, I imagine. I never did like that kid much. He was the kind that would take two lollipops from the jar.”
Grant said nothing, which caught the doctor’s attention. “You okay, Bill?”
“Just thinking . . .”
The nurse appeared again in the doorway and made a scolding motion at Williams.
“All right, all right,” the doctor said, nodding. He pointed to the watch on his wrist. “One more minute, Martha. I promise.”
As the nurse retreated Williams turned back to Grant. “They’re stacking up out there like planes over an airport. Gotta go.”
“Is she really pregnant?”
“Now, Bill—”
“I told you, it’s important. She seems to think she is.”
Williams asked, “When was the last time you saw her?”
“A week and a half ago. She came to my house. I’ve talked to her on the phone a few times since then, but haven’t seen her.”
Williams rose and came around his desk as Grant got out of his chair. The doctor put his arm around the detective’s middle, brought it up to his shoulder and squeezed. “You know, if I was your doctor, and I am, I would tell you to cut down on the cigarettes, which I can smell on your breath, and your drinking, since I felt what is probably a pint bottle in your raincoat pocket as I reached around you just now to bring my hand up to your shoulder. You see, I have to be a detective in my work, too.” He sighed. “I remember ten years ago, when your Rose and my Gladys, God rest both of them, dragged us to all kinds of things, it seemed every Saturday afternoon . . .”
His extended reminiscence was cut off by Grant’s stone face and the reappearance of Martha in the doorway. The doctor nodded to her and then leaned over to whisper into Grant’s ear.
“Point is, you’re a lousy detective, Bill. She’s got a belly on her you can see a mile away.”
“Wha—”
Williams whispered, “She’s five months pregnant, Bill.”
THIRTEEN
“Think of it as a favor, Mort. A big one.”
“You got that right. You think I’ve got nothing else to do than run lab tests on closed cases? That kid Ganley’s dead, right?”
Grant spoke evenly into the receiver. “Right.”
“And he was your number one, right?”
“Correct.”
“And he came up neg, right?”
“Correct again.”
“And now you want me to run not the other idiot, what’s his name, Petee Wilkins, but—”
“Yes, Mort. That’s what I want you to do.”
A long pause on the other end, then a snort. “You got it, hojo. Though God knows why I’m doing this.”
“Tomorrow, Mort?”
“A.M.”
There was a click in Grant’s ear.
&nb
sp; FOURTEEN
Marianne Carlin didn’t answer her phone, so Grant drove to her house. It was chilly and getting chillier, October marching steadfastly away from Indian summer and toward winter. The sky was a stark, cold, deep blue, a shade particular to this season. The elms and oaks were in full riot, bursting with red and yellow, already starting to shed. The road was littered with a beautiful blanket that had not yet become a nuisance and danger, waves and dunes of leaves that filled gutters, washed over curbs and clogged storm drains.
Already, a few pumpkins were out on stoops, uncarved but waiting for nearing Halloween.
Grant avoided the center of Orangefield, where the leftover bunting would still be strung for the Pumpkin Days Festival, which thankfully had ended. A week of drunken teens, greedy locals and a bloat of tourists in the Pumpkin Capital of the World living by the twin unwritten Orangefield codes of “Have A Good Time” and “Make A Buck.” Ranier Park had been turned once again into a mecca for commerce, with two huge circus tents erected—one filled with aisles of Halloween wares, the other a haven for lovers of bad live music, with seven days of varied fare: country, rock and roll, jazz and, heaven forbid, rap music. For the first time in ten years Grant had avoided Pumpkin Days duty, taking part of the week off and burying himself in administrative work the rest. It had been a kind of blessing.
Marianne Carlin’s house, a tidy ranch, was on a tidy street. The lawn was dotted with leaves not yet in need of raking. There was no pumpkin on the stoop, but a clutch of Indian corn hung from the front door, which was painted red.
As Grant parked his Taurus, Marianne emerged from the side of the house, wearing gardening gloves. Sure enough, now that he looked, she showed a belly, even beneath her painter’s overalls.
Grant caught up with her as she entered the yawning opening of the garage next to the house. He found her fumbling around in a wheelbarrow, which was filled with gardening tools.
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