“Grandma said you tried to do yourself in.”
He said do yourself in as if he wasn’t quite sure what it meant.
“Well, she’s right. I was very unhappy. I didn’t think I would ever be happy again. I thought both you and Daddy would be better off without me around.”
Evan said nothing to this. She took a length of bandage in her fingers and cut it.
“And Daddy divorced you.”
“Yes. We decided it was best. And I decided, along with your daddy, that it would be better if he took you, because he was making more money than I was, and he had his parents who could help him along.”
“And you were sick.”
“Yes.” She tied off the bandage and patted his arm. “There.”
“But you’re better now.”
Bonnie took a deep breath. “I think so. That was all a long time ago.”
Evan nodded and studied his bandaged hand.
“I want to stay with you,” he said.
Bonnie swallowed hard. “Even if I don’t do everything right, and make some mistakes?”
“Even if Daddy comes back,” Evan said softly.
Bonnie squeezed his arm. “Why don’t we sit outside and have a pop. It’s cooling off. We could go for a walk, if you wanted.”
Evan nodded, smiling. For the first time since the police had arrived in the bookstore, Bonnie felt a ray of hope. Things weren’t as bleak as she had imagined them to be. There even seemed the possibility, if she could allow herself to believe it, of a happy ending.
She was not like the others.
Shep realized that almost immediately.
He had followed her downtown, had parked and continued after her on foot. She entered the skyway system at the IDS Tower off Nicollet Mall, and he followed her along a circuitous route of elevators and skyways to First Bank, three buildings away, where she made a large cash deposit.
He sat on a bench outside the bank, smoking a cigarette, and watched her. She chatted with the teller. She smiled. On the way out of the bank she glanced over her shoulder to study the behind of a muscle-bound clod who had grinned at her in passing.
Not at all like the others. This was no country bumpkin, lost in the city. This was a woman who knew what she was doing, and knew how to do it. He wondered, briefly, if Jeff had ever slept with her, and felt a pang of envy.
She spent more than an hour in the skyway system, hopping from store to store. In the Doubleday Bookstore she picked up a couple of paperbacks, a newspaper, and a magazine. She stopped at a payphone and, smiling, talked for a few minutes. In a skyway coffee shop, overlooking the lights at SouthSeventh and Marquette, she ordered a cappuccino and a croissant, and flipped through her magazine.
Intrigued as all hell, Shep kept his distance, watching.
Her final stop was the legal offices of Peterson, Norstrum, Betham and Snell. For Shep, this was one of the hardest parts. It necessitated entering the same elevator, and in his casual shirt and pants he looked out of place. She didn’t seem to notice. She watched the numbers above the door, and did not glance at him once. The smell of her perfume permeated every pore of Shep’s body, and by the time he left the elevator he was giddy, and had an erection. He could not wait for her up there. She would pick him out for sure if he rode down with her, so he waited on the skyway level, and hoped she would come down the same way she went up.
She stayed in Peterson-Norstrum for nearly twenty minutes. When she reappeared in the skyway, she looked thoughtful, perhaps slightly angry.
She returned to her car. Shep skirted the parking lot and got into his own car. He waited. In the heat of the car he sweated, and his shirt clung to him. But the red Mazda did not move.
A minute later the redhead was out of the car. She looked very angry now. She banged a fist on top of the car.
“Now, now,” Shep muttered softly.
She went to the front of the car and lifted the hood. She looked around, as if waiting.
“Foreign cars,” Shep muttered.
He started his car and moved through the parking lot. When he came up behind her he stopped.
“Trouble?”
She turned to him, and the look of anger and frustration turned into a smile of relief. She was more beautiful up close than she had been at a distance. Her complexion was pale, creamy. Eyes gun-metal blue. Lips full, red.
“Oh, thank God! It won’t start. I think the battery is dead. I must have left the lights on, or something.”
The lights hadn’t been on, Shep knew, but he got out anyway and went to the front of the Mazda. The engine was a science-fiction prop of flat gray metal and smooth coiling cables.
“Hmmm,” Shep said.
“Could you give me a hand?”
“Can’t really tell what’s wrong. Where are the keys?”
“In the ignition.”
Again, with the smell of her perfume, he was giddy. He smiled at her as he slid into the driver’s seat. Her purse was sitting on the seat, open. Inside it was a brown envelope, with the return address of Peterson-Norstrum. He turned the key. The engine purred to life.
“It’s working!”
“Hmmm,” Shep said. He plucked the envelope from the purse and pushed it into his jacket.
When he got out of the car, she was standing two yards away, back pressed to the adjacent car, and the look of friendliness was gone. Shep swore inwardly. He’d blown it.
“Hello,” she said. “I thought it was you. You’re very careless, you know. I spotted you three times.”
Shep leaned against the Mazda. “And you’re very good.”
Oh, I know that. But thank you. You’re very much like Penny described.”
Shep stiffened. He reached into his jacket for his cigarettes, but there was a gun in her hand as if by magic and she shook her head.
“Please, don’t.”
Shep lowered his hands. “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to meet like this.”
“So I gathered. Did you have a warehouse picked out for our first date? Or a bathtub with ropes?”
Now Shep blushed. So, she knew about Tony Browning.
“What do you want?”
“I think that’s the question that I should be asking,” she said. “But I already know the answer. There’s nothing I can say to you about your brother that would make any difference to you. Mr. Thomas, isn’t it?”
Shep felt the black anger crawling at the back of his head. “You knew him?”
“I did. Like you, he was stupid and violent.”
“I’m going to kill you for that. I’m going to cut your eyes out and feed them to you.”
“Oh, shut up. I don’t think you understand what you’ve stumbled into here. I don’t think you comprehend the forces you are crossing.”
“I know you’re frightened of being discovered. I know you’re not normal.”
“Not normal? That is funny.”
“What are you?”
Another car came into the parking lot, and another after that. They stopped in the aisle, and their doors opened. Penny Gregson got out of one, along with a boy of about fifteen. Penny looked much better now. She stared at him, and she did not look frightened.
From the other car emerged two men. Shep recognized them both. He’d pegged them as contacts of Tony Browning. Jesus Christ, these guys were better organized and better operators than he had thought.
“We’re the future, Mr. Thomas,” the redhead said.
“Well, hello,” Shep said.
He grinned, and leaped over the top of the Mazda. The redhead’s cry of surprise followed him, but no gunshot. He hit the asphalt on the other side and rolled, scrambling behind the adjacent car. From there he crawled, and cut behind another car.
The redhead’s voice was strident, commanding, but there were no voices in response. Shep drew his Beretta, crouched, waited. The sun beat down on his back, and sweat popped on his neck and forehead.
Careless, he had been very, very careless.
He
heard tires squealing. From between cars he saw the flash of the red Mazda as it hit the street.
“Son of a bitch.”
Shep peeked around the rear of the car. One of the cars in the aisle had moved. The other was still there.
“You bastards.”
He saw the shadow on the side of the car before he heard anything, and he spun as the young boy reached for him. Shep ducked. The kid’s nails scraped his neck.
Shep kicked out and caught the kid in the balls. He slammed the kid’s face into the asphalt, then pressed the Beretta under his nose.
“Where’d she go?”
The kid looked up at him but said nothing.
“You bastards,” Shep muttered.
His vision clouded with grief and hatred. He squeezed the trigger. The shot sounded like a car’s backfire, and the kid’s nose disappeared. A wash of blood spilled across the black asphalt and splattered the sides of the beige sedan. Blow-back sent speckles of blood and brain across Shep’s face. The kid’s eyes stayed open.
From somewhere else in the parking lot came a wail of anguish. A moment later the squealing of tires, and the other car was turning into the street.
“God damn it!”
Shep ran for his car. The door was still open, and it was still running. He passed a woman who was returning to her car, and she looked at his face in horror. The kid’s brains. As he turned out onto the street, passing her again, she started screaming, staring down at the ground with her hands pressed to her mouth.
“Bon Appétit,” Shep muttered.
He hit I-35, merged with traffic, and headed for Roseville. Somewhere behind him, sirens were wailing.
He was sitting in a Donut Palace twenty minutes later, face cleaned and feeling better, sipping a cup of black coffee, when he pulled the envelope from his jacket and opened it.
There was a single piece of paper inside, and two small photographs attached with paper clips. On the paper was an address, close to downtown. The photographs were of a small boy, looking solemn, and of a young woman looking pensive. The photos, Shep guessed, were of the surveillance variety. Black and white, functional.
On the back of the boy’s photo somebody had scrawled the name Evan Laws. On the back of the woman’s, Bonnie Laine.
Shep memorized the address and studied the pictures a few minutes more. Then he went to the bathroom, ripped paper and photos to shreds, and flushed them. He studied himself in the mirror. Other than the small scratch on the side of his neck, from the kid’s nail, no sign of the firefight. Now that was a fair exchange. He rubbed cold water into the scratch and dried it. Almost invisible.
Feeling better, feeling angry, wanting to hurt something, he went back to the car.
Because of their afternoon naps, both Bonnie and Evan went to bed late. They had walked down to the video store in the early evening, and had rented a movie. The Terminator. Bonnie had never seen it. Evan, apparently, had seen it at least five times.
The boy fell asleep toward the end. After it was over, Bonnie carried him to his bedroom, undressed him, and tucked him in. She kissed his forehead.
“Good night, sweetheart.”
He opened his eyes and smiled. “Good night, Mom.”
It took Bonnie a while to fall asleep. She lay in bed and read for nearly an hour before turning off the light, then watched the shadows of tree branches and leaves ripple across the ceiling.
Sometime between wondering if she would ever be a real mother to Evan, to speculating on what had happened to Harris, to feeling thankful and warm toward her father-in-law, she drifted off to sleep.
When she woke it was with a sudden start. She stared at the ceiling. Something was wrong.
She lay absolutely still, heart beating fast, and listened. The house creaked. Leaves rustled outside. She could hear small traffic noises in the distance. The clock radio by the bed buzzed softly. It was 3:17.
But there was something else. It took her a minute to place it.
Somebody was crying.
She got up, pulled on a robe, and went into the hallway. The house was absolutely dark, the only light in the kitchen the soft green glow of the microwave clock. She stood outside Evan’s bedroom. From beyond the door came the sounds of choked sobs. The boy was crying into his pillow, trying to be silent.
She should go back to bed, she thought. This was private. He didn’t want her to intrude.
But the more she listened, the more panicked the crying sounded, until she could no longer stand it. She knocked on the door and went in.
The crying stopped.
“Evan?”
Sniffling.
“What’s wrong?”
She moved to the bed. The boy rolled over and looked up at her. In the light from the street his face was mottled, his eyes red. He had been crying for a long time, she thought.
She sat on the edge of the bed.
“Tell me what’s wrong, sweetie.”
“I had a nightmare.”
She leaned over and hugged him. “Oh, sweetie, we all have nightmares. It’s our brain worrying about what happened to us during the day, that’s all.”
He struggled in her arms. “This was real!”
The tone of his voice warned her not to argue with him. If there had been a test put before her since his arrival, then this was it. She had to take him seriously.
“Tell me about it,” she said.
He sniffled again. “It’s Daddy.”
Bonnie suppressed a shiver. “What about him?”
“He’s coming to get me. He’s going to take me to them.”
He started crying again, his whole body trembling. Bonnie gripped him and held him close.
“Your daddy wouldn’t hurt you, sweetie. He loves you as much as I do. He’s just lost, that’s all. Besides, I would never let anything hurt you. Never.”
Slowly, the intensity of the sobs decreased, until Evan was lying flat on the bed, breathing deeply. Bonnie stayed with him a while longer, stroking his hair, whispering to him.
When she was certain he was asleep, she got up carefully and left the room. She did not close his door. She turned on a light in the hallway, and she left her own bedroom door open.
This time, in bed, her thoughts were in turmoil. Sleep remained elusive. She kept returning to what Peterson had said. Just a thought. What if the accident was more than an accident? What if Harris’s disappearance was more than it seemed?
Jesus Christ, Harris, what have you done to our son?
Chapter Six
Wednesday dawned bright, sunny, and cool, with the promise of rising temperatures to come. Bonnie sat in the kitchen and watched Evan slowly work his way through a bowl of cereal. He never looked up from the table.
“Still hungry?”
Evan shook his head.
“How about some orange juice?”
Evan shrugged. Bonnie got up, poured a glass, and put it down in front of him. He sipped from it.
After getting him settled last night, she had hardly slept a wink herself. The bedroom window was turning gray before she finally slipped under, and it was not long after that until she had wakened.
Evan, too, looked tired. His eyes were red tinged, dark lines beneath them. When he finished the juice he yawned deeply.
“Okay,” Bonnie said. “This has gone far enough. We’re going to talk.”
Evan looked up expectantly. It was the first time this morning that he had met her eyes. There had been anger in her voice, but his look of confusion took it away from her.
In more conciliatory tones, she said, “What I mean is that, well, we’ve got to be honest with each other,
Evan. I don’t know how long you’ll be here, or when your dad will be found.”
“I want to stay here.”
“Then you have to tell me what you’re frightened of. Did something happen between you and your dad before the accident? You have to tell me the truth.”
He looked down again.
“If your dad show
s up tomorrow, he’ll probably want to take you. As far as I or anybody else knows, that’s fine.”
Evan shook his head.
“What I mean is, if your dad did something to you, then you have to let me know if you want me to help.” As she said it, the idea seemed ridiculous. Harris would never hurt Evan. “Otherwise I just can’t, Evan. We’ve got to be honest with each other. We’ve got to trust each other. You trust me, don’t you?”
Evan took a deep breath, then nodded.
“Then tell me why you’re frightened.”
Evan looked up at her. He was trembling. His eyes filled with tears.
“I don’t remember.”
Bonnie looked at him steadily, gauging his answer. “You mean you really don’t remember?”
He shook his head.
“What do you remember?”
“It’s just… black.”
The look of desperate fear on his face made Bonnie want to reach for him, but she held herself back.
“Do you mean that there’s a stretch of time that you don’t remember at all?”
He nodded.
For the first time, Bonnie wondered if she were doing the right thing. Already she felt out of her depth. Evan was talking about amnesia, and that was a subject for professionals.
“Do you remember the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember the accident?”
“A little bit. I remember the ambulance.”
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
He looked at his hands, brows bearing down in thought. “I remember my finger hurting.”
A thought occurred to her. “Was your finger already hurt? Before the accident?”
He thought about this, then shook his head. “In the accident.”
“Did you see your dad get out of the car?”
“He was gone.”
“Did he say anything to you about leaving?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
He looked down again, trembling.
“This is good, Evan. This is good.”
Evan said, “I remember some things from the black. I think.”
“What things?”
“I don’t know. They’re weird.”
“Tell me, Evan.”
“I remember a lady with red hair, and she keeps smiling at me, and she wants to kiss me.” He looked like he had put something sour in his mouth.
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