“You thought I was on that bus?”
“Not then. Later, next morning, when I read the paper. Like I said, the bus got demolished; so did the semi. Wreckage and bodies strewn to hell and gone. No survivors. None except you. You must’ve got off that bus for some reason. And—lucky you—it was after that when the semi plowed into it.” He smiled as if Andi were a rabbit he’d pulled out of a hat.
“Except me?” She stepped back again. “But . . . how’d you know I was on that bus? Did I tell you?”
Harry laughed. “No, you weren’t much for talking back then. Now you can’t keep your mouth shut. I liked you better then.” He flashed his white teeth. “It was your backpack.” He pointed to it where it lay in a forgotten heap. “The initials, A. O. The bus belonged to a place called Alhambra Orphanage. The firefighters found all kinds of stuff in the wreckage with A. O. on it. What the hell did you think the letters stood for, your name?”
Mary covered her face with her hands and wanted to weep, for this more than for almost anything else that had happened. To sit down in the doorway and cry. To have come this far, to have searched so hard, only to discover there was no loving family, no candles in the Olivier windows, no Marcus to paint, no charitable Sue, no badminton court, no Jules to chase the badminton birds. The doorway in this cabin led not to a brighter day beyond it but inward, to an even darker room, one still more anonymous. Alhambra Orphanage. Mary did not know if hearing bad news made the place where it was revealed even darker and more threatening, but it seemed to, here.
Andi’s voice was barely audible. “Why didn’t you take me back there? To the orphanage, when you found out?”
Harry actually laughed. “It was someplace in Utah. What the hell? I don’t remember, and I sure wasn’t driving to fucking Utah.”
Andi’s voice was tight, raspy. But she stayed with it. “What happened then?”
Harry shrugged, as if what had happened following the accident was of no account. “Went to Cripple Creek—when you mentioned it, I thought maybe you’d remembered. Then to Santa Fe. To that god-awful Orr woman’s place. I had business in Albuquerque and Silver City, like I told you when I picked you up that night in the truck. It wasn’t hard to find you. I figured you’d take one of the roads out of town, that you wouldn’t want to go into town. Not if you thought that’s where I was. The car got a busted tailpipe. I borrowed that truck from a friend in Santa Fe.”
Mary stared at him, scarcely able to believe he was saying this, that anyone who had done what he’d done could be so matter-of-fact.
“Did you find me later? Did you find the—” She stopped.
“Later?” He shook his head. “No. Oh, you mean that cabin? Yeah, I was there once. Wasn’t hard to find. But did you think I kept on looking for you for months? Hell, you’re not that great.” He laughed, perfectly comfortable lying there on the bed, smoking another cigarette.
“Just enough . . . to make me . . . get into bed.” She said it almost drunkenly, as if memory had come staggering back.
Only then did Harry seem aware the mood had shifted. He was silenced. The cabin was deathly quiet; Mary could hear a tuneless humming on the walk outside. Brill had come back. Or never left.
“What happened to Peggy Atkins?”
“Peggy? She died just like I said; she got messed up in hydraulics, a hole at Big Mallard Rapids. A keeper’s bad news, just plain hell.”
“With some help from you? Maybe just a nudge? You had something going with her, didn’t you?”
He laughed. “Something. Not nearly as much as Peggy thought, though. You jealous? Is that what you’re—”
“She was giving you trouble, wasn’t she?”
“Look, I don’t know what—” But something about Andi must have stopped him. “Hey, babe, why waste time talking about Peggy? You’re a hell of a lot better.”
In a motion so swift and fluid that Mary nearly missed it, Andi’s hand flew into her backpack, the pack fell to the floor, and the Smith & Wesson was in her hand. Mary stepped back, wide-eyed, upsetting a lamp. The clamor it made, saturating the room with noise, didn’t appear to register on Andi, whose eyes were riveted on Harry Wine.
He took a stumbling step backward. “Jesus, is that thing loaded?”
Andi slapped the magazine home, pulled back the slide. “It is now.”
Harry looked wildly around, eyes vacuuming the room for some weapon, some defense.
“Tell me, Harry. Tell me how much better than Peggy I was at Patsy Orr’s place.”
“Put that gun down, babe.” He made a shoving motion with his hands. “Okay, I admit you were kind of out of it and I guess I shouldn’t have taken advantage—” He shrugged and smiled, managing to retrieve some of his confidence even looking down the barrel of the pistol. “Listen, now—”
“What did you do to Floyd?”
“Floyd? What in hell? Why would I—you mean you think I killed Floyd Ludens, for Christ’s sake?”
“His name wasn’t Ludens. It was Atkins. He was her father.”
“How did you—?” Harry stopped abruptly. “Look, you were there, girl, you saw what happened!” He tried to swagger it off; he appealed to Mary. “Mary, what’s going on with your pal, here? She on something?” He laughed. “Maybe the bus driver was doped up that night—”
Mary heard a snick and knew the safety was off.
“You like women. But I get the idea you maybe like little boys more.” Andi swept her arm to take in the viscous white light of the photographer’s lamps.
With mock shame, Harry cocked his head. “Ah. It’s harmless enough, just a few pictures.” Then he started toward Andi.
Is he totally crazy? thought Mary. He still thinks he can sweet-talk her into behaving.
“Honey, look, it’s just my nature.”
“Is it?” It came out like spit on a razor. “Well, this is mine.”
The shots in quick succession blew Harry Wine back, picked him off the floor, threw him against the wall, flung him against the bureau, where a volley of shot sprayed blood on the mirror before glass shattered and rained down on him, while another shot twisted him and slammed him against the wall again. His black clothes camouflaged the blood pouring from his wounds. Arcs of blood followed his body sliding down the wall, where it slumped.
Andi was still shooting as she walked toward him. Then the gun stopped.
Mary had never seen so much blood. It poured down the wall, pooled on the floor, misted the air. Andi’s clothes were streaked with blood, his blood that had flown across the distance between them. She stood there, silent, the gun dropped to her side, looking at Mary.
43
What she looked like was sorrowful, and Mary knew the sorrow wasn’t for Harry Wine but for Mary herself. Andi reached out her hand to Mary’s shoulder, opened her mouth to say something, said nothing, grabbed Mary’s hand, and pulled her out through the door.
“The backpack!” yelled Mary, running into the room again.
When Mary got to the car, Andi had pulled the old blanket they’d used for Jules and the coyote pup around her and was sitting in the front seat.
Mary climbed in, shaky herself, started the car, and looked out at the fog. The fog seemed to have crept from the woods and settled in her head. She did not know what to do. “Andi, what will we do?”
“Go up to Swanns’, call the police. No. Call Reuel; yes, call Reuel. He’ll know what to do.”
Mary accelerated in a burst of gravel and noise and drove the road as far as the Swanns’ house. My God, she had forgotten about Brill. Where was he?
She pulled the car off the road, got out, and looked in the window. “You just stay there, okay? You’re kind of shaking like you’re in shock or something. I’ll be back.” She ran up the porch steps. Most of the lights had been turned off except for the rear of the house (Mary guessed the kitchen) and the bulb of the porch light, the fixture itself dangling.
Bonnie Swann opened the door; she was still fully dressed, as if she wer
e always prepared for an emergency. She was used to keeping vigils. “Hello,” she said.
“Mrs. Swann, Bonnie. Listen, can I use your phone?”
“Why, sure. Come on in. Brill’s back. He came home a while ago, just walked in as if he never walked out, and I want to thank you for helpin’ us look. Hope and Earl’s still out there, they don’t know we found him. Phone’s in the kitchen. You go ahead, right through that door.”
Mary realized she hadn’t Reuel’s number, didn’t even know if he had a phone. “Bonnie, do you know Reuel’s number?”
“Reuel? I sure do.” She rattled it off.
“Thanks.” Mary found the phone, fortunately up on the wall, for she’d never have found it in the mess that was the Swanns’ kitchen. She tapped her fingers on the receiver, waiting and waiting for Reuel to answer. Something told her not to stand there too long; after a dozen rings she hung up.
Disheartened, she thanked Bonnie and left. She debated with herself whether to tell his mother about Brill and what had been going on with Harry Wine. But since it wouldn’t be going on anymore, there was, of course, no emergency. Mary started down the steps as Bonnie Swann called out to her, “Listen, if you see Hope or Earl, would you tell them to please come home?”
“Sure. Good night.” Nearly tripping over a rusty tricycle at the top of the porch steps and over some garden implement at the bottom, Mary mushed through the rain-layered grass and knew, before she got to the car, what she would find.
No one. Andi had disappeared.
It was this that got her off the telephone inside the house, this barely formed notion that she would find Andi gone. She had taken her backpack and left behind the blanket. The blanket she had taken care to wrap around her, not because she was cold, but because she was blood-covered. The blanket was streaked with it; none had gotten on the seat.
Andi! Don’t you ever stop thinking? “Andi!” Mary cried, but more to herself and the night than in any attempt to make Andi hear, for Mary knew she couldn’t.
She got in the car and drove.
The dark figure walking along the road stopped and turned when Mary braked hard and called from the car, “Andi!”
The girl raised her forearm against the glare of the headlights. It was Hope Swann.
Mary’s heart sank. After the girl crossed over to the car, Mary told her about Brill. Hope said she’d been real worried. She didn’t seem to question that it was Mary bringing her this news. She offered to drive Hope back, but Hope declined, saying it wasn’t that far.
Mary asked her if she’d seen anybody else walking around just a short time ago.
Hope said, “Well, you know there’s that girl I saw over to the garbage dump. Real pretty, blond hair. You were there too.”
Once again, Mary felt her heartbeat double. “Where? Where’d you see her?”
“Right back there.” She turned and pointed in the direction of her house. “That’s where she got a ride. Lucky; there ain’t many cars this time of night.”
“Was the car headed this way, into town?”
“Yeah. I reckon.”
Hope still hung there with her arms crossed on the windowsill as if she’d spent many a night in just such circumstances. And that made Mary wonder if she herself had been a victim of Harry Wine.
Hope finally removed herself from the window and said good-bye.
Mary drove off. She was surprised that Andi would ever let anyone pick her up again.
• • •
Reuel was sitting outside his trailer, smoking and drinking beer out of a bottle when Mary pulled up.
“I been waitin’ for you,” he said, setting the bottle on the ground near Sinclair, who lay beside the chair.
Mary just stood there, unable to talk, hardly knowing what to say if she did.
He nodded toward the other chair. “Better sit down.”
Mary said. “Something’s happened. Bad. I tried to call, but—” She frowned. “How come you knew I was coming?”
“Because Andi called me. Only fifteen, twenty minutes ago.”
“From where? Where is she?”
“You don’t think she was about to tell me, do you?”
No. She wasn’t surprised. Then she said, “I passed the police coming here. Did you call them?”
“I did. Why, did you want to?”
Sometimes, with that straight face of his, Mary didn’t know if he was teasing her or not. “No, of course not.” She slumped in the chair. “She shot him.”
“Yep. Sure did.”
Mary sat forward. “There’s going to be a big investigation, isn’t there?”
Reuel nodded. “Sure is. Harry Wine was pretty important around here.” Reuel reached down to scratch Sinclair’s neck. Sinclair yawned. “Thing is, if one or both of you reported you’d witnessed him with Brill Swann and in those circumstances, I just about guarantee nobody’d have believed it except Jack Kite and a few others, couple cops that’s got his number. Harry’s never been charged yet with any crime. So what I figure is, if Andi hadn’t shot the bastard, he’d be around for a long time makin’ misery for us. A man like Harry Wine, that’s got his finger in every half-baked dirty pie you can think of, that man’s goin’ to make a lot of enemies, and that means there’s a lot of suspects the police’ll have to track down. Clyde Quick, for one. Just because Harry supplied the animals, that don’t mean Clyde liked him. His wife, Bobbie, did, though. Which I guess is one big reason Clyde hated his guts.”
“But . . . suppose somebody else is arrested for it?”
“There ain’t nobody gonna be arrested,” Reuel said earnestly, sitting forward. “Look at it this way: the sheriff knows at least some of the things Harry was up to. I know for a fact he thinks Harry beat up on Beth until one day he finally beat her to death. He knows about Harry’s little picture-taking business, and I know he thinks there’s somethin’ that’s not been turned up about the death of Peggy Atkins. Especially now her father just had the same kind of accident. The sheriff and a couple other cops and Jack, they’ve been tryin’ to catch Wine at it, at one of his hobbies, but he’s just too damn slippery. Now the sheriff’s honest, but just how far is he goin’ to go to bring the man to justice who shot Harry Wine? He’ll conduct his investigation perfectly legal and all, but there ain’t no way in the wide world he could ever suspect you two.”
“Yes, there is. When the police question Bonnie Swann they’ll know I was there. And if they question Hope, they’ll know we both were.”
Reuel shook his head. “Swanns’ll have forgot all about seein’ either of you girls by the time the cops ever get around to them. I had a word with Bonnie not twenty minutes ago. Last thing she said before we hung up was, ‘What two girls?’ ”
“But I’m an accessory.”
“If it pleases you to think that way, go ahead. Me, I think a better description is a fourteen-year-old girl with more guts than sense who’s far, far from home.”
“Sixteen,” Mary said automatically. Then, “Andi’s a lot farther from home.”
“She’s different. She’s a shot arrow, aimed a long time ago.” At Mary’s look of puzzlement, he said, “How did she come to be the only survivor in a crash so bad it killed every other person on that bus? Did she get off it? Did the bus stop and let her off? Call of nature, maybe? It just don’t seem possible, but somethin’ like that must have happened.”
Mary said impatiently, “You make it sound like—fate or something. Or God’s plan, or something else besides just chance.”
“Maybe so. All I know is, this is different rules, Mary. This is entirely different rules.”
“But you can’t go around making up other rules because you don’t like the ones you’re told to play by!”
Reuel pounded his beer bottle on the table, waking up Sinclair. “By God, but I don’t know which of you’s the more self-righteous, you or her!” He was silent for a while, as if he was really trying to work this out in his mind; then he said, “Oh, and she told me to be sure
to tell you to remember the dog.” His frown was perplexed. “What dog’s this?”
Then, there was a long argument (Stop haranguing me, you’re worse than Rosella!) about how Mary was to get back to Santa Fe. He insisted she couldn’t drive that distance all by herself (Even if you are sixteen, which I don’t see proof of); Mary was just as insistent she go by herself. He told her like it or not, he’d come to the motel in the morning any time she said and drive her and her car to Santa Fe. He could take the bus back or fly.
The trouble was, Mary reflected, he was breaking what she thought must be the first condition of capture: never let the prisoner out of your sight.
44
The same receptionist, Miss Abrahams, cut her the kind of patronizing look reserved for children (incapable, the look said) and slapped back a couple of pages of her appointment book. She told Mary she’d have to speak to Doctor about the dog. Hadn’t they said they were coming before this?
“Something came up,” said Mary.
Miss Abrahams sighed aggrievedly and slipped off her stool. In a minute she was back in the doorway to the examination room, beckoning Mary with her finger. Mary passed her and went into the examination room. She was suddenly extremely anxious.
Dr. Krueger entered with a file in his hand, nodding to her but looking at the file.
She knew what he was going to say before he said it. Her own mouth could have synchronized with his, forming the words: “I’m sorry, but—”
He’s dead.
“—he’s dead. He got really sick.”
Mary swallowed hard, wet her dry lips. She kept looking at him, but he, in turn, kept from meeting her eyes. A vet shy of death? He must confront it almost daily. Clearing her throat, she finally choked out a question she shouldn’t have had to ask: “Sick from what?”
He seemed flustered. “What?”
She held herself steady as if she carried a bowl of tears that would spill out with the smallest movement.
Still with his gaze directed above her, as if delivering the news to someone else behind her, he said, “A kind of—pneumonia. He was congested when you brought him in; remember, I told you?”
Biting the Moon Page 29
