A Killer in the Wind (24 page)

Something in the tone of her voice made me clutch inside. Something tender and knowledgeable in the way she spoke. I knew deep down I didn’t want to hear what she was going to say next, but I had to. I had to know.

“What do you mean?” I asked her.

“This is actually kind of funny,” she said. “It’s like a joke from God or something. I mean, what am I? I’m no big brain. I know that. I wait tables at Sal’s. But I get it. And you’re the cop, you’re the detective and you can’t figure it out. And that’s it, isn’t it? You literally can’t. That’s the whole point.”

I shook my head. “What’s the point? The point of what? What are you talking about?” But I felt like I knew what she meant and like I didn’t want to know.

“You dreamed Samantha,” Bethany said. “You’ve been dreaming about her all this time, haven’t you? And now she’s real.”

My breathing went shallow. I drove the car over the dark, winding road. I licked my dry lips. “Yeah?”

“The boy too. You saw the ghost of the boy while you were on the drug. And Samantha has his photograph. Which means he was real too.”

I worked the wheel, worked the Mustang around a long curve, worked to swallow down the knot in my throat.

“Do you remember when we were talking?” Bethany said. “How we were in bed talking just before you got the call to come to the river? You remember?”

I tried to say
yeah
but the word turned to ashes.

“I asked you what your earliest memory was,” said Bethany. “You said it was playing catch with one of your foster fathers.”

I tried to say
so what
? but those words turned to ashes too.

“You said he coached Little League and wanted you on his team. You said he was shocked you’d never played catch before.”

I turned to her. She was a shadow in the darkness. Only her eyes gleamed. Then she laughed.

“It really is a joke from God. You’re the detective, but you can’t see it. My nephew’s in Little League. Little League is for seven-year-olds. Six at the youngest, but if your foster father was shocked you hadn’t played catch, well, then I bet you were probably at least seven, maybe even eight.”

I faced the windshield again, my reflection half–blacked out, half-visible. I licked my lips again. I tried to tell myself I didn’t understand what she was saying.

“Come on!” said Bethany. “Your first memory is when you were seven or eight? I can remember stuff from when I was, like, three years old. I can remember a wedding I went to when I was four—what the bride was wearing, what the preacher looked like, everything . . .”

I was driving in the left lane, moving fast, close to eighty. I saw a green exit sign by the right side of the road. I swerved across the empty lanes, my hands unsteady on the wheel, my palms damp. I shot the car off the highway, down the ramp, braking hard, slowing. I reached the stop sign at the intersection. Took a right onto the two-lane and pulled over quickly under an oak tree by the side of the road. The tree bowed down out of the pale starry sky and hung over the roof of the car. I sat with Bethany in the deep shadows there, the glow from the dashboard light playing over us. Man, I was exhausted. I hurt. My eyes felt sunken and weak. My lips felt shivery and slack. The scratch on my face burned and ached under the gauze Bethany had taped over it.

Bethany spoke softly out of the darkness. “You’re missing three or four years of memory,” she said. “That’s why you can’t see it. Not seeing it is the whole point of everything—everything you do and say. You don’t know who you are, Champ. You don’t want to know. That’s the whole point of everything.” She reached over and touched my arm and I started—I almost jumped back away from her—but her fingers curled gently around my wrist and held on. “Hallucinations don’t come to life, Dan. Unless they’re not hallucinations. Unless they’re memories.”

I leaned forward in my seat. I pressed my forehead against the steering wheel, holding the wheel in both hands. I closed my eyes.

“That’s the joke,” Bethany said. “You’re the detective but you can’t figure out the answer. Because the answer is you.”

Now it was after three
A.M
. We were sitting in the Gemini Diner on Second Avenue in midtown Manhattan. We were in the last booth. My back was to the wall so I was facing the door but I was staring into my coffee. Bethany was sitting across from me. I could feel her watching me but I didn’t look up. I was thinking about everything she had said. It was like I knew it was true but I didn’t want to know. It was like I wanted to think about it but I couldn’t.

I raised my eyes to her—I guess I was going to try to talk it out. But just then, Monahan pushed in through the glass door.

“Don’t tell him,” I said.

Then Monahan was standing immensely over us. He gave a short, sharp laugh when he saw the state of me.

“Jesus, Champion.”

“They started it.”

“How many’d you kill this time?”

“Just one.”

“Jesus.”

“One thug. Stark slipped me.”

“Do I have to worry about a body turning up?”

“Not likely.”

Monahan laughed again, not a happy laugh. He jerked his head at Bethany. “Shove over, sweetheart.” He slid into the booth next to her. He loomed over her, made her look tiny, made her look like a tourist under the Rock of Gibraltar.

“I’m Bethany,” she told him.

Monahan nodded, but he kept his eyes on me. He didn’t care who she was. “So it’s still you and Stark,” he said to me.

I nodded. “He says he’ll kill everyone I love.”

Monahan’s big Irish schoolboy face broke into a big Irish schoolboy grin. “That’s a short list, anyway. I know
I
feel safe.”

“He asked after you, in fact.”

“Thoughtful guy.”

“I gave him your address so he could drop you a line.”

“Nice.”

“A map to your place. Pictures of your kids.”

“So I gotta move ’em somewhere?”

“Yeah.”

“And you want me to take this one too.” He barely tilted his thumb toward Bethany.

“Why not? I figure if you’re all together, it’ll save Stark travel expenses. I’m all about economy.”

Monahan placed his giant paw over his giant forehead. He drew the hand slowly down over his face, as if he were wiping away cobwebs. He leaned in across the table. “How hard would you laugh if I told you to come in with me?”

“Only moderately but for a long time.”

Monahan sighed. “Okay.” He slapped the tabletop. Slid out of the booth. He said to Beth: “Come on, sister, let’s go.” She slid out too and stood beside him. He wrapped his paw around her elbow. Made her arm look like a toothpick stuck in a steak. He looked down at me.

“Really, Champ. Come in. Give us what you got. Let us handle it.”

“Oh, yeah? So you’ll run him to ground in a year or two?”

“We’ll get him. It’s what we do.”

I looked up at him. I thought about it. I thought about what Bethany had said.

I’m afraid of what all the killing will turn you into
.

“Right,” I said aloud. “You and the NYPD—you’ll run Stark down and arrest him.”

“The FBI too. This isn’t just a New York operation.”

“Another couple of years, assuming he doesn’t make bail—assuming he doesn’t skip bail—you might even manage to put him on trial.”

“We’ll put him on trial. He’s a hired gun. The feds could give him the death penalty.”

“Sure, if he’s convicted. Then, what, even if he
is
convicted. Fifteen, sixteen years down the line—if he doesn’t win an appeal and if the laws don’t change—he could have himself a date with the executioner.”

“There you go.”

“Good plan,” I said. I glanced at Bethany. She frowned down at me. I turned back to Monahan.

“Only one problem,” I said. “I
am
the executioner.”

11

Desperate Measures

I
HOLED UP IN
a motel in Brooklyn just off the Gowanus Expressway. I didn’t bother to get undressed. There wasn’t much left of the night. I just kicked my shoes off and lay on top of the bedspread in my clothes. Curtains drawn, room dark. I watched the ceiling. I listened to the traffic, the wash and rumble and roar of the traffic, never ceasing outside the window. I heard Bethany’s voice in my head.

You’re missing three or four years of memory. That’s why you can’t see it. Not seeing it is the whole point of everything
.

I tried to think about that but somehow I couldn’t keep my mind on it. My mind kept drifting. After a while, I was standing outside. I was in the backyard. I was wearing a baseball glove on my left hand, holding a ball in my right. I threw the ball and the Fat Woman caught it. She stared at me—huge, shapeless, featureless, her face a swirl of cancer stains. Her mouth opened. It was a deep black hole.

Have you got him, Stark?
she said.

My eyes jerked wide. I heard the traffic on the Gowanus.

That can’t be right,
I thought.
That was just a dream
.

I turned to look over my shoulder, to make sure I was awake now. I saw an open place surrounded by trees. The sunlight poured down through the branches in hazy beams. Men with shovels were digging holes in the dirt. Dead children slowly stood up in the holes. They stared at me. Alexander was one of them. He stood up in his hole and stared at me too. I watched the dead children, holding the baseball in my hand. I wanted to throw the ball to Alexander but I wasn’t sure whether the dead played catch.

My eyes jerked open. Traffic.

That can’t be right,
I thought.
That had to have been a dream.

It was a long night. Dream after dream, all bad. Finally I woke to see a glow of daylight under the hem of the heavy curtains. I checked the clock on the bedside table. I was surprised to see it was after 8
A.M
.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed. I sat up, groaning. My body was sore all over. I staggered into the bathroom. I looked in the mirror. The face that stared back at me was hollow-eyed, bandaged, bruised. I tugged the gauze off my cheek. A thick black scab covered the cut beneath. The scarred man in the reflection looked at me accusingly.

You don’t know who you are
.

I turned my back on him. Walked out. Walked across the hotel room. I found the curtain string and pulled it.

The curtains parted and the gray city light poured in over me. I blinked out into it. I saw the motel parking lot. I saw the cars passing on the freeway just beyond, an unbroken, racing parade. There was a faint gray haze in the air, maybe from the highway fumes.

I looked out and thought about the dead children in my dream. I thought about the Fat Woman. Still out there somewhere. Stark too. Still out there. Coming after me. Coming after everyone I loved.

And the only link to them I had was Samantha. A hallucination come to life . . .

Hallucinations don’t come to life. Unless they’re not hallucinations. Unless they’re memories
.

But how could I have known her and forgotten her? It made no sense.

You’re the detective but you can’t see the answer,
Bethany had said.
Because the answer is you
.

I have to remember,
I thought.

After a while, I turned from the daylight back into the room. I went to the chair in the corner. The manila envelope was there—the envelope I had taken from Samantha Pryor’s apartment, from the hiding hole behind the wainscoting. This is what Stark had been looking for. What was it? What did Samantha know?

I removed the sheaf of paper inside and dealt the pages out on top of the bedspread so I could see them all together. I put the snapshot—the faded photograph of Alexander—on the bedside table. I felt him staring at me the whole time.

I hung over the bed, studying the papers.

Most of the pages were printouts of newspaper stories. A lot of the stories were about my old case: Martin Emory and the “House of Evil.” The other pages were from legal pads. They were covered in scribbles: doodles, words, numbers lost amidst sketches of faceless people, houses, jagged lines like flames. I made out the words
St. Mary
. I made out the words
New York
. I made out names:
Arnold, William, Jenny
. My eye flashed to the name
Samantha,
the name
Alexander
—but they were there unconnected, like thoughts that had come and gone.

I kept stalking around the edge of the bed, my eyes going over the pages with a hungry, predatory gaze. What did Samantha know? What was she looking for? I picked out other words:
Elm, Sawnee, Pothurst
. . . Street names? Towns? I wasn’t sure.