The Shimmer

by Carsten Stroud

  “Will he go straight to the Vizzini compound?”

  “No. He’ll see to Mary Alice. He’ll go wherever she is first. To say goodbye.”

  They were both quiet for a while, thinking about what that would be like for Clete.

  “It bothers me,” said Annabelle.

  “What bothers you?”

  “That she died three days early. It means something. It’s like the way the records changed.”

  “They changed because Selena came back here, and changed the history of the place.”

  “Yes. And she caused that change, didn’t she?”

  “I think so. Maybe not on purpose. But yes.”

  “Do you think that’s not the only thing she caused? Maybe she caused Mary Alice to die three days earlier than the last time she died.”

  “You mean, she went out last night and killed Mary Alice herself?”

  “I’m thinking it. Yes.”

  “You know, I’ve always wondered why Barbara and Katy died at the exact same spot where Mary Alice died. In Matanzas Inlet.”

  “Yes. It’s like somebody made it happen that way. And who’s the only person who could make things happen in two different times?”

  “Selena.”

  “Yes. Selena. Or Philomena, if that’s who she really is.”

  “But if she had a reason for doing it, what was the reason?”

  “The last time Mary Alice died, Clete went after the Vizzinis. He finished them as a power. Wiped out most of their talent. Killed Anthony, killed a whole lot of their people.”

  “But he survived, didn’t he? Why did he live?”

  “Far as I know, because the Vizzinis didn’t know he was coming at them, and by the time they reacted, most of them were dead.”

  “Nobody warned them?”

  “Nobody knew. And he came at them after Mary Alice died.”

  She was quiet for a long time. The sun was sliding into the west, purple stains spreading across the fields.

  “But now somebody does know he’s coming. Selena knows.”

  “And if she warns Tessio...”

  “This time, Clete dies. And if he dies...”

  “So do I. And Selena would think she was safe.”

  “Until I find her. And what else would happen?”

  “I never meet Barbara. Katy isn’t born.”

  “Yes. And...? What else doesn’t happen?”

  The thought pierced him like an icicle.

  “Barbara doesn’t die.”

  time lockets

  Selena was back in her hotel suite in the Alcazar, having breakfast, trying to think about how she would handle Tessio today when they met at the Monterey Court, as they did every Wednesday.

  But she was really thinking about what she had done last night, and she was not happy. She felt something had gone terribly wrong, although it had all worked exactly as she hoped it would, because she was a meticulous planner and it had been her experience that, if you planned carefully, and considered every possible twist, and if you were always ready to adapt to changing events, most of the time it would all work out satisfactorily. And, on the face of it, it had gone exactly the way she had hoped it would go.

  She had goaded Little Anthony into a run at Clete’s wife, and he might have been successful, and her problem was solved that way. Or, as it turned out, Clete might have put a police detail around her, and if so, she was going to have to improvise.

  And Clete had put a watch on the house, so when the Vizzinis’ car went cruising by on the second night, the County gun dogs had followed after it like greyhounds chasing a mechanical rabbit.

  And she was surprised, and delighted, when the Forrests had come out to watch the chase. She waited in the darkness at the edge of the road as the three of them stood on the porch, the police lights and sirens fading into the distance.

  After a while, when everything was quiet again, the old couple wandered off to bed, and the single woman, a delicate blonde flower, Mary Alice Redding, stood out on the porch, taking in the sound of the ocean roaring out there in the velvet night and breathing in the salty tang of the onshore breeze.

  Selena, improvising, had materialized out of the darkness at the bottom of the drive, coming into the glow of the porch light, smiling, simply a neighbor brought out by all the excitement, just like everyone else.

  A few friendly words at the bottom of the drive, a comfortable connection established, and then the woman was taken. Into her own car, a massive Oldsmobile, at gunpoint, Mary Alice at the wheel.

  Two miles up the road, to the place where Highway One curved around the headland of Matanzas Inlet, Mary Alice in tears, but brave, a true cop wife, asking questions that Selena didn’t bother to answer, since the gun at the woman’s right temple was explanation enough.

  Pulled over at the edge of Matanzas Inlet, a vicious blow to Mary Alice’s head, making sure she was unconscious, waiting awhile to see that no one was coming. And then Selena put the car into Drive, and it eased its ponderous way down the steep bank and into the water, where it floated, bubbling and bobbing for a while, sinking slowly, until, by the engine’s forward weight, it heeled up, trunk rising, like the Titanic tilting its massive stern, and the tank-sized car took the woman down.

  Selena had watched it go until the last of the bubbles floated away under a gauzy veil of starlight, and Matanzas Inlet grew quiet again, as if nothing at all bad had ever happened here, although in Spanish its name meant Massacre Bay.

  Then the long walk back to her car, parked in a stand of palms a mile down the road, thinking, as she walked through the salty cool of the shoreline road, that it had all been so easy, that perhaps it was supposed to happen that way in the first place.

  Although she knew that couldn’t be true, because, in the original event, Selena had actually not been involved.

  It had been exactly what it had looked like, a terrible accident, just as Tessio had told her when she had visited him in his seaside compound before the Shimmer brought her back here.

  So this time, she had made it happen, and yes it was three days early, but she was sure that the outcome would be much the same. Clete would attack the Vizzinis, but this time, the Vizzinis would be waiting for him.

  And he’d die. And all would be well.

  She reached the car, opened the driver’s door—

  And then this happened.

  * * *

  As she slipped into her car she was suddenly overwhelmed by a tidal shift in her reality. She seemed to fall down into a spinning eternity of time, always repeating the same series of events—the gun the car the drive the blow, and into the water, the gun the car the drive the blow, and into the water, the gun the car the drive the blow, and into the water—over and over and over again, an endless roundabout circle with no escape, no exit, no way out, for the rest of eternity.

  It only ended when she found the locket on its chain around her neck. She clutched it so hard she broke the chain, held the locket to her breasts, closed her eyes, willing the locket to take her back to that soft white room at the Pontalba, the one fixed time point in her long chaotic life...and the locket helped...she felt the spinning slow down, the cycle became irregular, the vortex dissipated, and then only gradually, but the time loop slowed, faded and, finally, eventually, released her.

  * * *

  She sat there for a long time, clutching her locket, sick with shock and fear—this had never happened to her before—and she only snapped out of it when a sheriff’s car sped past, lights on, racing north toward Matanzas Inlet, going by so fast they never saw her car parked deep in a stand of palms.

  She gathered herself together, took a deep breath, sighing, deeply shaken to her core, put the rental car in gear and headed south, staying far away from Matanzas Inlet, taking an inland route back to St. Augustine.

  On the
way down the coast she thought about what had just happened, and she wondered if the fact that she had deliberately altered a real event—causing it three days early, and not allowing Mary Alice to die in a natural accident—had somehow created a dangerous ripple in the time stream.

  But, as usually happened with Selena, the farther away she got from Matanzas Inlet, the weaker her memory of that looping time lock became, until finally, as she came back up the mainland and turned right toward the coast and saw the lights of St. Augustine up ahead, and the Alcazar Hotel waiting, it faded away into nothing.

  By the time she laid her weary head back onto her pillow in her hotel suite, it was utterly gone from her, and all that was in her mind, as she drifted away, was to remind herself that she was seeing Tessio Vizzini tomorrow—no, later today, at the Monterey Court—and she would have to handle that meeting carefully.

  And so she slept, secure in the feeling that, although the evening had been challenging, she had risen to it, achieved her goals, and that all was now perfectly right in Selena D’Arcy’s world.

  death in the afternoon

  Tessio was late. He had left a message at the desk of the Monterey Court. He had a story but she didn’t believe it. His message was that his wife had required him to go shopping. Annamaria Vizzini was an imperious Sicilian black-haired blue-eyed beauty who ran Tessio up and down the staircases of her whimsical moods like a hotel bellhop.

  But in the matter of their meetings at the Monterey, this had never happened before. She didn’t believe the message. Something else was going on. So Selena was on her guard.

  An hour late, he called the room.

  “Carissima, I will be—”

  “Already are late. Troppo tarde, Tessio.”

  “Annamaria—”

  “Annamaria what?”

  “She required to go shopping—”

  “Fine. I will go shopping too.”

  “For what?”

  “For a more timely lover.”

  “Aurelia, per piacere—”

  “We have much to talk about. You heard about Clete Redding’s wife?”

  “Yes. Of course. She’s dead. Little Anthony and Sergio Carpo were near the house—”

  “And you have heard that Clete—”

  “Aurelia, this is a phone. People listen.”

  “But you need to know—”

  “And I will. When we meet.”

  “When will that be?”

  “I don’t know. I have to talk to Anthony. And then consider what to do.”

  “Did Little Anthony have anything to do with this death?”

  Tessio’s voice grew colder.

  “Cara mia, I have told you. This is not the place for talk. When we meet—”

  “But did he?”

  “I will put him to this question, and we will see what he has to say. And Sergio was with him, and Sergio doesn’t lie to me. So I must deal with this. I will see you soon, and we will—”

  “When will that be?”

  A labored sigh.

  “Not today, cara.”

  “Not today?”

  “No. I am sorry. Mi dispiace. You know how I wish to see you. This death, it has made things difficult for our family. I am not free to move about—”

  “Tessio, I have things to tell you. About this death. Important things.”

  More chill. And more cold steel.

  “Aurelia, I love you, but I do not see how you can know things that I do not. I do not have time for women’s talk. This is a serious thing, this death of Mary Alice, and I must find out if this infamita is on our hands, on the hands of my son, and then I must meet with Clete, and resolve this.”

  “Meet with Clete? Why?”

  “If Little Anthony did this thing, I will let Clete kill him. Honor requires this. We do not make war on the wives, on the children. But I do not believe this was something Little Anthony could do. For one thing, Sergio was with him, and Sergio wouldn’t allow it. That is why he agreed to go with him in the first place. Little Anthony is a fool, but Sergio is not. I will meet with Clete and convince him that it was not our doing. I say again. We do not make war on wives and children. And then—with Clete’s help—we will find the people who did this, and they will go into the alligator pool.”

  “Tessio—”

  “Ciao, bella. We will talk soon. I am busy now.”

  “With something more important than me?”

  “No not like that. But I must find out how this woman died, and then deal with what I find.”

  “Tessio—”

  But he was gone.

  * * *

  And she had a lot to think about. If Tessio put Little Anthony to the question, and he was very good at that—the alligators down by the lagoon were a convincing argument—then Little Anthony and Sergio Carpo would probably convince Tessio that they had not been the agents of the death of Mary Alice Redding.

  Which was a very dangerous thing to happen. Because if Tessio wished to look deeply into the matter, he would soon find out that she had taken a rental car out of the Alcazar yesterday, and that she could not account for her actions...

  If he turned his unkind attention to her, if he ever came to believe that she had been responsible for the death of Mary Alice Redding, she would be in an impossible position. He said he was in love with her, and with another man you’d say, Well, he will protect me no matter what. But not with Tessio Vizzini. He had the sentimental heart of a pit viper.

  She thought of running.

  Yes. It had come to that.

  She was going to have to run.

  But to where?

  No. Wrong question.

  Not to where.

  To when.

  though hell should bar the way

  Clete got to Immaculate Heart Hospital in Jacksonville just after sundown, shut the car down, shoved his way through a phalanx of well-meaning friends who tried to make the meeting easier. This wasn’t possible, but he appreciated them for trying.

  He found the Forrests, Frank and Helen, in a little chapel off the lobby. Declan was with them, a tousle-haired blond kid with large brown eyes that were much too old for him.

  Declan got up and ran to him, and he picked him up and held him tight, feeling the kid’s breath on his neck, smelling the grassy scent of a child. Declan was crying, but silently, and it tore his heart apart to feel it.

  Only blood can fix this, he was thinking.

  Only blood.

  They sat together in the chapel for a long time, Frank and Helen and Declan and Clete. Frank and Helen told him about the sheriff’s car and the way it had gone off with lights and siren after the big black Caddy, how Frank and Helen and Mary Alice had come out onto the porch to watch the chase, how Mary Alice had stayed behind, and that was the last time they saw her.

  Declan sat silently through this, staring at his hands, and then he looked at Clete, his face tight.

  “She’s dead, Dad. Mom is dead.”

  “I know, son. I know.”

  “And you killed her.”

  That rocked him. Helen moved in to say something, but Clete stopped her.

  “How did I kill her, Declan?”

  “With your stupid job, your stupid cop job. Those Italian people you’re friends with, the ones who give you money, who paid for our house on the beach, and for Mom’s new car, the one she died in—now they don’t like you anymore, and that’s why you sent us down to be with Uncle Frank and Aunt Helen. And now Mom’s dead, and you’re not.”

  “Do you wish I was dead?”

  Declan flared up at him.

  “Yes. I do. I wish you had died and not Mom. You’re the one with all the bad people who give you money. They should have killed you. Not Mom.”

  “Declan,” said Helen, her voice sharp and shocke
d, but Clete held up a hand.

  “Declan...I am so sorry about this.”

  “So what? Mom’s still dead.”

  “And I’m not?”

  “Not yet. But that’s okay. You will be soon.”

  Clete tried to hold him, but Declan pushed him away, hate in his eyes, and he turned to Helen, and she took him in her arms. She looked at Clete, shock and sorrow and just a touch of blame.

  “Clete, he’s just upset. He didn’t mean it.”

  “No? I think he did. Maybe he’s right.”

  “No, Clete, he’s not. He’s young... Give him time.”

  A long silence.

  “Helen, I have something to do.”

  “I know. You go do it. We’ll keep Declan with us until you can...take care of things.”

  He looked at her, saw that she knew what he was going to do. He touched Declan’s shoulder, but the boy just burrowed deeper into Helen’s arms.

  He stood up then, looked at them, in the pew, in the soft amber light of the little chapel, with the scent of sandalwood and candle wax and dead flowers, and then he turned and walked away.

  He didn’t look back.

  * * *

  He found the morgue attendant, got the tray number out of him and walked him down the rows of stainless-steel lockers until they got to Row Five Tray Two.

  He stood before Row Five Tray Two for a good five minutes, thinking, This is what it comes down to, all of our married life, all of those moments, at the beach, in bed, being apart, being together, and now we are here, in this final moment, and I will never have another moment where we are together, other than this, our last moment together, the one where I am alive and you are dead.

  The attendant waited until he said yes, and then pulled out the tray. There was a sheet, and a figure beneath, mounded in the shroud.

  The attendant waited until Clete was ready, and then he lifted it and pulled it back, stepped away, and Clete looked at Mary Alice, his golden girl, for the last time in this living world.

  He stood there for a timeless time, the cold light of the morgue pouring down over him as he froze solid inside.

  After a while, he let out a long deep shuddering sigh, kissed her on the lips, folded the sheet back over her body, turned and walked away. The attendant, a biblical man, watched him go, and thought, Comes a pale horse...