Lucas turns south and sprints.
One set of tracks fills the bed. Jaeger says a word and another word and then gives up shouting. Adrenaline gives him life. He follows near enough to be felt, and Lucas looks back just once more, judging the train’s speed. Some visceral calculation is made, and he believes he has time and enough speed. But the horn sounds again, shaking his body, and he can’t be sure. Arms pump and he drives off the balls of his feet, reclaiming the two-stride lead. Then the engine grudgingly throttles back, and knowing that he won’t have to leap onto the big black rocks, Lucas falls back into the sprint he would use on a hot summer track.
The trail dips between boulders, down into the trees again.
He rides the slope, Jaeger still chasing, and Lucas stops and Jaeger runs into his back as the Amtrak roars past. Neither man falls. The horn blares once more, for emphasis, and an angry face in the engine’s window glares down at them. Sleek old cars follow, and after them, new cars cobbled together in some crash program. Empty windows and one little boy stare at the world. The boy waves at them and smiles, utterly thrilled with a life jammed with spectacle and adventure.
Lucas waves back.
Jaeger collapses to a squat, unable to find his breath. The air is full of diesel fumes. He tries cursing and can’t. He wants to stand and can’t. All those weeks in jail have eaten at his legs, and for athletes in their forties lay-offs are crippling. Jaeger won’t win another important race in his life. He knows this, and Lucas sees it, and then the beaten man stands, his entire body shaking.
The train is far enough gone that the forest sounds are returning.
“So did you kill him?” says Jaeger.
Lucas shakes his head.
Jaeger nods. If he does or doesn’t believe that answer isn’t important. Looking straight at Lucas, he says, “Now what?”
“I’m going,” Lucas says. “Wait here for the others.”
“And then?”
Downstream from them, climbing out of the trees, the rest of the group is cautiously running next to the still-humming rails. “I don’t know who killed Wade,” he says.
“Too bad,” Jaeger says. “But I know who paid to have it done.” That earns a long, long stare.
“Keep that face,” Lucas says. “Tell everybody what I just told you. And we’ll see what happens next.”
NINE
“Jingle bells,” the voice said.
“Merry Christmas to you.”
“No, I’m talking about the race. The 5K. If you don’t win this year, you aren’t trying. That’s what I think.”
Lucas poured a cup, not talking.
“I’m seeing improvement, Lucas. Every week, with your splits and overall times, you’re finding fire.”
“Thanks for caring.”
“Just want to help.” Then the voice went away.
Lucas sat on a kitchen stool, sipping. Outside it was cold and wet, and it was chill and damp in the house. The television had been showing an old Stallone movie, but the network interrupted with news about a big dam in China getting washed away. Serious stuff, and Lucas reached across the counter, turning it off.
The voice returned. “You there?”
“Still. Where did you go?”
“Another call. But I’m back.”
“You’re busy.”
“Always,” Wade said. “Have you entered?”
“The Jingle Bell? It’s not till next month.”
“I’ll do it for you. My treat.”
Lucas set the cup down, saying nothing.
“Okay, it’s done.”
“Like that?”
“Like that.”
“Thanks, I guess.” A long breath seemed necessary. Then Lucas said, “You probably heard, but they let him out. A couple days ago.”
“Yeah, Sarah called when it happened. And I read every story, too.”
“What do you think?”
“They don’t have enough evidence, I think.”
“The DNA tests didn’t work,” Lucas said. “That’s what I’m hearing. Not enough material, even with the fanciest labs helping.”
“That big rain screwed everything.”
“Lucky for Carl,” said Lucas.
Silence.
“Ever meet Crouse’s sister-in-law?”
“The cop with the jiggly ass?” Wade laughed. “Yeah, she’s a pretty one.”
“Well, she says the detectives can’t see anybody but Jaeger. He has to be the guy. But it’s the Wild West around here anymore, and there’s not enough manpower to throw at one case. So they let Jaeger go, hoping for something to break later.”
“I’ve studied the statistics, Lucas. Even in good times, a lot of murders never get solved.”
“Who else is suspicious?”
The silence ended with fake breathing and an exasperated voice. “You know, I can hope it’s Carl. Because if this was a random thing, like some hobo riding the rails or something, then nobody’s ever going to find out what happened.”
Lucas tried silence.
After a while, Wade said, “You don’t have any excuses. I’m looking at the race’s roster. Your only competition is Harris, and he can’t hang with you.”
“It’s just the Jingle Bells,” said Lucas. “A nothing run.”
Another pause.
Another long sip of coffee.
Then the dead man said, “Win a race, Lucas. Just one race. Then you can talk all you want about nothings.”
Trees surrender to flattened grass and little stands of sumac. The sky hasn’t changed, but the scattered clouds seem higher than before and the polished blue above the world is bright enough to make eyes water and blink. Diving into the grass, the twisting trail decides to narrow, and then like a man regaining his concentration, it straightens—a tidy little gully etched into the native black sod. Lucas runs into the meadow, out where he can see and be seen, and that’s where he stops. Nobody follows. Certain teeth ache when he stares into the wind, and he pulls down his sleeves and kneels slightly, listening and waiting. He soon becomes an expert in the sound of wind. It isn’t just one noise, but instead wind is endless overlapping noises, each coming from some different place, each hurrying to find ears that want to hear voices and words and sad cries that were never there.
Lucas touches his phone. Eyes scroll and blink to make the call. What isn’t a second phone rings in a place that isn’t a place. After four rings, he expects voicemail. But the fifth ring breaks early.
“What are you doing?” says the voice.
“Standing. What are you doing?”
“Standing,” says Wade.
“Why aren’t you running with us?”
“Nobody wanted to talk before. So I turned early and finished.” A lip-smack sound comes across. “Have I ever told you? The coffee always tastes great over here.”
Lucas stands, knees a little achy.
“Everybody’s panting, judging by these paces I’ve been watching.”
“Do you know where they are?” Lucas says.
“Standing where you left Jaeger, mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“I’ve got one phone moving.”
“But you can’t watch Carl. He doesn’t carry a phone.”
“Even if he did, I wouldn’t know anything. A person has to call a person, and the line has to be opened. That’s how I get a lock on positions. And I don’t think Jaeger wants to trade running stories with me.”
“By the way,” Lucas says, “Carl looks pretty innocent.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking the shit might have gotten himself a bad break.”
“And what do you think about me?” Lucas says.
Silence is the answer, persistent and unnerving.
“So how long does a phone lock last?” Lucas says.
“Four hours, give or take. Then the AI attendant spills me back into the normal mode.”
Lucas digs his mittens out of his tights, warming the fingers. “You said one phone is moving.” Then
he says, “Never mind, I see her.”
A brown cap and a pale little face comes out from the trees, the ponytail swaying behind.
“How’s Sarah look?” Wade says.
“Real, real tired.”
“Poor girl.”
“Yeah.”
Something not quite a laugh comes into his ear. “I pester you,” says Wade. “I know you don’t like it sometimes. But she’s a lot worse about calling me, and usually for no good reason.”
“See you, Wade.”
“Yeah,” the voice says. “Take care.”
Sarah wants to hurry, but her legs are short and stiff. She shuffles and cries and then stops crying. She comes at Lucas with her face twisting, fresh agonies piled on the old, and as soon as she is in arm’s length, she makes a fist inside the pink mitten and jabs at his stomach. But even the arms are drained. Lucas catches the fist between his hands. She can’t hurt him, so he lowers his hands. “Okay,” he says, sticking his stomach out. “If it helps.”
Sarah doesn’t hit. She falls to her knees, sobbing hard.
Nobody moves in the woods to the north. To the west is the unseen creek with its shackling trees. The empty Amtrak line runs down the east side of the park. A quarter mile south stands a row of ancient cottonwoods, tall as hills, the silvery bark glowing in the rising light. Past those trees is a second rail line. A long oak trestle was built across the floodplain and the older line where the Amtrak would eventually run. Dirt was brought in and dumped under the trestle, creating a tall dark ridge. That line was abandoned decades ago. The rails were pulled up for scrap, old ties sold to gardeners. Only the ridge remains, sprouting trees and angling across the park on its way to towns that exist as history and as memory and as drab little dots on yellowed maps.
Sarah stands and takes in one worthless breath. “You told Jaeger,” she says. “You think somebody hired somebody.”
Lucas watches her.
“Somebody paid a professional to kill Wade. Is that what you’re thinking?”
“No,” he says. “I don’t think a person put down money to have it done.”
She watches him.
“Remember that guy who was kiting checks?” he says. “I once mentioned him to Wade, that I had this bad feeling about the Stingray man. What was his name?”
“Wails.”
“Something about Wails was wrong. Talking to the guy, I could see that he was full of shit. I didn’t think of check-kiting and stealing millions. That wasn’t what I expected. But I told Wade what I thought, and you know him. He took me seriously. ‘I’ll make some inquiries, see what’s what,’ he said. Then a week later, cops opened an investigation, and a couple days after that, Wails drove out here . . . .. to the parking lot we just ran through, if I remember this right . . . and killed himself—”
“But that was a year ago,” Sarah says. “Wade was still alive.”
“I didn’t say Mr. Wails hired it. I’m asking: What if he had a backup?”
She says nothing, staring past his face now.
“I’m not talking about an official, carry-the-same-name kind of backup,” he says. “There have to be ways to fake a name and slip clear of your past life, living in the clouds like Wade does. Being everywhere, nowhere. Sitting on whatever stolen money the man was able to hide, and nothing to do with its days but get angrier and angrier about the son-of-a-bitch that made this happen.”
Sarah lifts both hands, piling them on top of her head while she slowly rocks back and forth.
“Wails’s backup hates Wade Tanner. So he goes out into the living world and finds somebody to help get revenge. Maybe it’s for the money, or maybe for personal reasons. And like Carl says, it has to be somebody strong enough and fast enough to keep close to Wade when they’re running.”
Sarah drops her arms, leaning into Lucas.
He holds her and looks everywhere. The world moves under the wind, but there aren’t any people. After another half minute, he says, “I was guessing Pete. He’s got the muscle and enough pop in the legs. I figured I was going to see him come out of the trees, looking to shut me up. You I didn’t expect.”
“It isn’t Pete,” she says.
“Yeah, I don’t want it to be.”
“No. I mean it isn’t him.”
“Why not?”
She pulls out of his grip, wiping her swollen eyes. “Pete made us run this course. Remember? And Jaeger just happened to be up on the levee at the right time. Those aren’t coincidences. While we were chasing you, Pete explained everything. He said he bumped into Jaeger last week and threw a few insults at him, and Carl came back with the same arguments he used on the bridge. That’s when Pete started to believe him. He began wondering that if Carl wasn’t guilty, then maybe the best suspect left was you.”
Lucas keeps watch to north, and nothing changes.
A hard sorry laugh comes out of her. “You won’t believe this,” she says. “Probably nobody would at this point. But I want you to know: I have never, ever cheated on my husband. Not with Masters, and not even with Wade.”
Lucas listens to the winds, waiting.
Then she giggles, brightly and suddenly, saying, “But of course it doesn’t count, playing games with a machine.”
Lucas shakes his head and breathes.
“Harris,” he says.
“What?”
“Maybe he’s the killer.”
“It can’t be,” she says. “Pete looked at the kid, sure. We know he’s strange and we don’t know much about his story. But like Carl says, this was a personal killing. A fury killing. Pete says that an ex-Mormon goofball who isn’t here six weeks isn’t going to want to hurt Wade Tanner. That’s why Pete sent him charging off in the wrong direction this morning. He’s not a suspect.”
“He’s telling you that? In front of the kid?”
She shakes her head. “No, Harris was gone by then.”
“Gone?”
“The train went past and we caught up to Carl, and Carl gave us your message, and then we stood there talking. And then Harris said we were nuts and stupid and he’d rather run with the deer than waste time standing around with old farts. So he ran back to the train tracks and headed . . . I don’t remember where. . . . ”
Lucas says nothing.
Sarah takes a breath and holds it. Then all at once, her eyes become big, and she says, “What if . . . ?”
Lucas tells his phone to redial.
Wade picks up and says, “Still standing, still drinking my coffee.”
“So,” Lucas says. “You talk to Harris today?”
A very brief silence ends with the sound of people being politely quiet, ten million backups stuffed inside that very crowded room. And from the busy silence, Wade says, “Today? No, I haven’t talked to the boy. Why? What’s our new stallion up to?”
The meadow trail leads south to the cottonwoods. Where shadows begin, Lucas stops and stows the mittens and looks back. Sarah is slowly making her way to the north edge of the grass, and the rest of the runners have come out to meet her. Jaeger stands in the middle of the group. Hands on hips or on top of their heads, they look like soldiers in mismatched uniforms ready to quit the war. Sarah stops and talks, pointing back at Lucas, and everybody stares across the grass, and he can feel the doubts and suspicions thrown his way.
Turning, he settles into a lazy trot.
The forest trail snakes its way toward Ash Creek. The abandoned rail line stands on his left, capped with a second trail that leads over the Amtrak line and back into town. Harris could be running the old right-of-way. If he was smart, the kid would be galloping home now to pack a bag and make some last-second escape. But that would be sensible, and sensible isn’t Harris. He’s a charger and a brawler. And besides, he found them in the middle of a forest. So the boy isn’t completely stupid, and he has some clever way of tracking people.
The five o’clock calls come back to Lucas—the sexy woman and the desperate father. Either one of them could have been Wails fak
ing a voice to patch into the tracking system. But that feels unlikely. Why not just let him pick up, and then hang up? But maybe there’s some other trick. Trying to think it through, Lucas realizes that he isn’t running and can’t remember when he stopped. Staring at the ground, not certain about his own thoughts, his eyes grab onto his ankle, and he bends and pulls up the muddy black leg of the tights, staring at that fancy bracelet that does nothing but shout at the world that he is here and he is sober.
Lucas straightens and turns one full circle. Something is moving on top of the old trestle, but then the background of tree limbs swallows it. Or it never was. Lucas falls into running again, easy long steps eating distance. Get past the trestle, and a dozen trails are waiting to be followed, and there’s a hundred ways out of the park. But the best obvious plan is dialing 911, or at least calling somebody closer. Audrey. Lucas decides on her and touches the phone, and he touches it again when nothing happens. But despite having power and a green light, the machine refuses to find the world beyond.
Lucas stops and looks left.
A yellow shirt is on the high ground, not even pretending to hide. The face above it smiles, and maybe it tries laughing. Harris wants to laugh. He stands still, looking down at Lucas while saying a word or two. His glasses are clear enough to show the eyes. He is close enough that the bloody lip looks big and sweat makes the boy-face bright. Some little voice needs to be listened to, and he nods and says something else. Then the right hand lifts, holding a chunk of rusted steel—a piece of trash shaped by chance to resemble a small hatchet.
Harris lifts a foot and drops it.
Lucas breaks, sprinting toward the creek. This time he doesn’t obey the trail, cutting across the hard-frozen dirt wherever the brush is thin. He looks down and ahead, and ten strides into this race he turns stupid. It isn’t just the world that narrows. His mind empties, his entire day going away. Oxygen-starved and terrified, the brain drops into wild panic, and every step tries to be the biggest, and every downed limb and little gully is jumped with a grace that will never be duplicated. He doesn’t know where Harris is, and really, it doesn’t matter. Nothing counts but speed and conquering distance, and that wild perfect urgency lasts for most of a minute. And then Lucas runs dry of fuel and breath.
The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2011 Edition Page 60
