A Face at the Window (33 page)

She crept forward another foot or so. From a distance the Knife Edge had appeared hopelessly narrow, but now that she was out on it a small rational part of her mind noted that it was in fact about three feet wide.

Like my front walk. As wide as a sidewalk. Anyone can make it down a sidewalk.

"So you've figured that out, have you?" Campbell said, then turned toward Anthony. "Go get that car, like you meant to," he called out, and as the wounded youth turned to obey, added:

"Don't think, Anthony, okay? Punk like you starts trying to think independently?" Campbell glanced down at the beach where in one of the caves, Marky's body still lay.

"Nothing but trouble," said Campbell softly. Anthony stood still, absorbing the veiled threat: that Anthony was the one who had committed murder. He'd better do as he was told.

"Yeah," Anthony muttered, then limped off painfully through the tall grass to do as he was bidden. He'd find a car to steal, Jake estimated, in only a few minutes. Then he would be back.

And against the two of them she had no chance…Shakily she got to her feet on the Knife Edge. Sidewalk's width or no, it was still a precarious spot, and its sturdiness was not precisely a reassuring feature, either. Out at its middle, halfway between the bluff where it began and the pinnacle where it ended, the ancient stone bridge to nowhere was only a few inches thick.

A chunk plummeted from it, then another. Eons old, battered and worn, like even the most durable geological entities the Knife Edge had its allotted life span, its beginning and end in time as well as in space.

And now its physical end had begun. Another big chunk of it dropped out as Campbell watched Jake with avid interest.

With an effort she dragged her gaze up to meet his. He was enjoying this, she saw from his mocking grin. He'd planned it all right down to the last detail, and now he was doing it; how he'd readied himself for a hop-skip-and-jump right out to the end of a suicidal drop-off, she couldn't imagine.

But somehow, Ozzie Campbell had done that, too. "Whatever it is you want, it doesn't matter to me," she told him. "I'll do it. Just…give me the little girl."

"Really?" The smile on the face of the tiger had nothing on the one that spread toothily over Campbell's face now, the bloodred earring in his ear flashing wickedly as he replied.

"Good. I'm glad we understand one another, then." He thrust Lee out over the yawning emptiness below. "Just—"

"What?" she demanded. If Lee's clothes tore, if a wind gust hit him or he just got dizzy…"Tell me what you want, you…"

What?
A wave of unreality washed over her: There he was, the man who'd killed her mother, who'd haunted her dreams, driven her father into hiding and made her, in effect, an orphan. Yet facing him now she felt…

Nothing. Zero. All this time she'd believed that if only he were caught and punished, if he were locked up where people even worse than he was might hurt him even worse than he'd hurt her…

Vengeance. She'd wanted it; yearned for it. But nothing in her life anymore was about what he'd done.

A pang of regret pierced her for all the time she'd wasted thinking about him, and then…
gone.
Like a wisp of smoke. "What do you want?" she demanded again. "Why won't you give her back to me?"

His smile widened. Tauntingly, he swung Lee's body back and forth. "Give her back? Oh, no. That would be too easy. That, my dear Jacobia, wouldn't achieve my goal at all."

The smile vanished. "No, I have a plan for you, and I want to be sure you understand that you will cooperate in every way. I want to be sure you know how serious I am…and will remain."

He swung Lee like a rag doll. "That's what all this has been about, you see. The detail, the complexity—that you
believe
me, that you know I can do what I say I will, no matter what."

His voice and his gestures were growing more grandiose. He'd won—or so he believed. "So you can have her back," he finished in a mock-reasonable, smarmily obnoxious tone, "just as soon as I'm convinced you understand your end of the bargain."

She crouched again, trying to catch her breath as she clung there listening to him, taking one deep breath after another in an effort not to throw up. Her heart raced, her hands on the narrow stone bridge suddenly sweat-slick and prickling with fright.

"And to prove that you do," Campbell finished, "I want you to come right out here to me and get her…now."

T
his might still turn out to be his lucky day after all,
Anthony thought. Hurting and bleeding, black spots floating in front of his eyes…but he could hang in a little longer.

Absolutely he could. Long enough to run away. He had the feeling that overall, he might not be thinking very clearly. But he was clear on the running part. Screw the money; he'd murdered Marky and now it was time to get out, to run so far and fast
that even the bedbugs from his old place wouldn't be able to find him.

Almost immediately, he came upon a big white mommy-van parked at a haphazard angle in a yard so full of scattered toys and other assorted crap, you could hardly see the house. The garage with its door hanging open was crammed with junk, too, stuff they just threw in there and forgot about. Build a garage and park the car out on the lawn, he thought scornfully; at least in the juvie home, they'd taught him to keep his things in order.

The few he'd had. Inside the van was also wall-to-wall chaos and naturally the keys hung from the ignition where somebody had left them. He sat in the driver's seat, surrounded by half-empty organic juice bottles, abandoned clothes, and the other dirty or ruined belongings of these foolish people.

Anthony considered entering their place and teaching them a few things about how carelessness could lead to disaster; the key ring had a house key on it, for creep's sake. But screw them; let them learn it from someone else.

Someone worse. A weedy-looking little dweeb with a wispy tan goatee, still wearing his striped pajamas, ran out onto the front porch of the house as Anthony drove away. Little pot belly, this guy had, pooching out from underneath his flapping pa-jama top.

"Hey," the guy yelled, raising his fist. "Come back here!"

Ooh,
Anthony thought, grinning widely through his pain with the pleasure of gunning the van down the early morning street. Sticking his hand out, he flipped the little dweeb the bird, at which the dweeb hopped up and down in impotent outrage.

Ooh, come back here,
Anthony thought, laughing aloud.
Yeah, sure I will. Go on back in and finish your Cheerios, or whatever it is dweebs eat.
In the rearview, the dweeb's bare foot came down on a plastic toy, and that made him even madder.

The last time Anthony looked, the dweeb was still out there waving and shouting.

Jake was no
natural athlete. Sam had inherited his physical agility from his father, she felt quite certain. Still, once she got to her feet again, walking on the Knife Edge wasn't quite as bad as she'd feared.
Just don't look down,
Sam always told her.
One foot in front of the other.

But halfway out another wave of vertigo hit her; she dropped to one knee and clung there, breathing shallowly
Don't look to the left or right,
Sam would've instructed. Desperately, she tried listening to him while the world turned and tilted and the narrow stone bridge seemed to be trying to buck her off.

"I know," Campbell said. "You're very angry with me, aren't you? But look at it from my side for a minute."

She crept forward a few more inches. "You despise me," he went on, "and yet I need you very badly. I need you to retract your victim's impact statement, Jacobia. You
must
do it for me."

Oh, really? she.
retorted silently.
Then how come you're trying so hard to kill me?

But he wasn't, she realized. For some reason she hadn't yet quite figured out, being out here like this was easy for him, and he had no imagination for other people, their feelings and fears.

Only for his own. She dared another quick glance at him; at least Lee still had the life jacket. If she fell, there was the barest chance she might hit water, might miss those rocks jutting up like teeth.

But they'd be hard to avoid. Another gull swooped in boldly, curious to see whether any of the unusual activity around here might promise food, nearly brushing Campbell's head with its muscular wing as it went by. At the unexpected movement his
feet shifted uncertainly, all the brash confidence vanishing from his face for an instant.

"No!" she gasped, scrambling forward as more stone fell away beneath her, bits of it bouncing and tumbling.

"Calm down," Campbell advised, regaining his equilibrium. "That's the trouble with you, you get so upset over everything. Just come on out, it's as wide as a sidewalk, for Christ's sake."

I'll give you something to be upset over,
she thought. And then:
If I
could
get out there, maybe I could give
him
something to worry about, for a change.
But before she could complete this thought, two things happened:

Lee began waking up. Or regaining consciousness. Which ever: the cool breeze, her discomfort at being clamped under Campbell's arm, or just her own childish recuperative powers-kids spiked fevers all the time; they didn't necessarily mean serious illness—one or all of these things together made Lee begin whining and squirming, kicking and waving her arms angrily.

Campbell frowned, shifting his stance to keep his grip and his balance and barely succeeding, just as another big chunk of granite fell, exploding in a burst of shards on the rocks below.

Where it had been, a jagged crack opened up, widened alarmingly.

The Knife Edge was collapsing.

".…Jesus," Bob Arnold
exhaled wonderingly

Helen Nevelson opened her eyes. The Eastport police chief's pink, plump face hovered over her, delight and concern mingling in it. His blue eyes widened vexedly "Christ, she's bleeding."

His face receded, a balloon bobbing away.
No,
she thought.
No, come back, I have to tell you…

"—call Town Hall, tell ‘em get the good ambulance running
and get it over to my office, pronto," she heard him say. "We got a hospital run to make. And while you're at it, call the feds and the county guys, ask them to get over to me ay-sap. And you know what? Get somebody to Wallace Warfield's place, too; he called a minute ago to say his van got stolen."

There was a silence while he listened. Then: "Yeah, I know. Wonder he can even tell it's gone. Run down there anyway, though, or…yeah.
Yeah,
he is kind of a little—"

Pissant,
Helen thought clearly. She baby-sat the Warfields’ kids, and Bob was going to say that Wally Warfield was a—

"Okay. Thanks," Bob finished. Then he returned. "Hey, Helen. Hey, girl, you know how hard we've all been lookin’ for you? Your ma's gonna be tickled pink."

A shadow crossed his face; there was something Bob wasn't saying. But it couldn't be as important as…

She tried struggling up but somehow her head wouldn't rise from the headrest, in the front seat of the purple car that she'd gotten into somehow, hours or days earlier.

But before that, what had happened? She wasn't sure; had she been hit by a car? Or had someone attacked her?

Maybe, she realized dizzily. Whatever it was, it felt like a ton of bricks had been dropped on her from a great height. Then the woman who'd saved her—

…the knife, Helen thought, what happened to the…

—began speaking.

"I wanted to take her to the clinic," the woman said, "and I tried, but she was so absolutely insistent about talking to you first, and she looks awful but her vital signs seem okay, so—"

Helen's eyes rolled, focused again.
Don't tell them that I pulled a knife on you,
she begged silently
Please don't.
If the woman said that, they'd think Helen was the one who'd…

But no one was talking about a knife. An ambulance
screamed up to where the purple car woman had taken Helen, outside what Jody always called the cop shop…

Jody Suddenly she remembered him and felt frightened for him, though she didn't know why. Something was happening; he was here but he wasn't here…

"Helen? Come on, now, stay awake for me a minute. Your mom will be here shortly Helen, do you remember what happened?"

Again Bob turned away. "Hey, get that FBI crew on the horn, will you? Tell ‘em we got one of ‘em back.
Yeah,
the big one."

He leaned over her. "Helen, where's Lee? Was she with you?"

She could smell the Juicy Fruit on his breath. "Helen, do you know where Lee is? Do you know what happened to her?"

Lee…they'd taken her. But how long ago, and where? Pain came slam-banging back into her head as Helen struggled to stay awake, to remember-Suddenly, the woman held out the switchblade. Helen's heart sank. "She pulled this, in the car," the woman said reluctantly. "I'm sure she wouldn't have hurt me, but…"