All for One (49 page)

Somewhat up the trail, deeper into a stand of lush, mossy trees, Mandy spotted movement off the path and stopped. She peered into a small clearing that was faintly lit by the moon and saw what the movement was. It was a raccoon, nibbling at something it had in its front paws.

Her face brightened and she stepped off the trail and sat on a log at the edge of the circular bald spot in the forest.

“She’s getting her hopes up,” Mandy said, then looked up to the sky and the hollow crescent moon hanging over the camp. She stared at it for a long moment before bringing her eyes back down. “Do you agree, Charlie?”

Charlie, standing near the center of the clearing, shrugged his shoulders and wiped at his face again and again with his hand. His hair had changed. It was gray and black.

“Oh, Charlie, why doesn’t she just listen?” Mandy shook her head at her friend.

Charlie’s fingers batted at his cheek. “I don’t know, Mandy.”

“I mean, she
knows
that she should. Everything has worked out fine until now. Why, Charlie? Why?”

“Hi there!”

Mary bolted up from the log and spun toward the voice.

“It’s pretty out here, isn’t it?” the woman, well bundled in jacket and scarf and woolen cap asked. Mary remembered her. She was a teacher from Bravehill Elementary School. They had met at the opening session.

“Jan, is it?” Mary checked.

The woman nodded and smiled. “Jan Peters.” She pointed at Mary. “Mary....Austin, right?”

“Right,” Mary said. A flutter moved through her heart, and she told herself that everything was just fine. That she must have just gone for a walk and gotten so caught up in the beauty of the woods at night that she couldn’t remember getting to this spot.

...losing time...

It wasn’t losing time. It wasn’t.

Jan Peters stepped close to the log she’d seen Mary sitting on and marveled visibly at the little creature in the clearing. “The camp manager was right, wasn’t he?”

“Right?”

Jan pointed to the raccoon and Mary looked. “He told everyone not to feed the raccoons because they’re too tame as it is.”

“Right,” Mary lied. When had he said that?
Did I miss that?

The raccoon was no more than ten feet from them and looked like it had nary a care in the world, nibbling as it was on something hard and dark, and scratching its face so cutely every few bites or so. “I’d say that is pretty darned tame.”

“Yeah,” Mary agreed, pushing her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans.

“I didn’t know they had names, though,” Jan Peters said to Mary.

“Names?”

“Yeah. You were calling that one Charlie when I walked up. Is that his name?”

Mary stiffened, her skin crawling instantly, and one very old recollection coming back, dodging the hound and its vigilant, hot eyes. This memory very suddenly clear, very pointed, very, very true, she knew. Something she had forgotten, had been made to forget, but which now was back, and as real in her present memory as the feeling now that she was going mad.

“I had a friend when I was little,” Mary explained to Jan, a shimmy deep beneath her words. “And this friend had a friend, and his name was Charlie.”

Jan Peters looked quizzically at the sixth grade teacher from Windhaven. “Really?”

Mary nodded.
Mandy,please,no,Mandy,pleasedon’tbebackagain...
“I guess that’s why I was calling...it Charlie.”

*  *  *

Joey was staring at the ceiling, mentally kicking himself for not kissing PJ. He’d wanted to, and he was pretty sure she wanted him to, but the butterflies in his gut had made even breathing difficult after she put her head on his shoulder. Talking? Damn near impossible.

Now he wished he’d just done it. When would
this
kind of chance come again? When he was thirty?

“Joey.”

He rolled to the side of the top bunk and looked over. “Jeff?”

“Yeah,” he whispered, standing right below, still in his clothes. Everyone but his friend was asleep. Guns was snoring like a buzz saw.

“Where’ve you been?” Joey asked quietly. “I didn’t even hear you come in.”

“Joey?”

“Yeah? What?”

“Mike told me something the other night.”

Joey leaned over the edge, as close as he could to Jeff’s face. “Have you been crying?”

“He told me something, Joey. I’ve gotta tell you. He told me not to, but I’ve gotta.”

“Tell me what?”

After Jeff had, Joey cried into his pillow.

Forty Six

When the phone rang early, Dooley rolled the way it should have been at his house and ended up on the floor next to Mary’s couch. Now he thought maybe he should have just slept in the damn bed.

He scrambled to his knees and reached over the coffee table to the table by the chair and snatched up the cordless. “Hell— Austin residence.”

“Good morning, Dooley.”

It was Joel, sounding cocky and judgmental. “I didn’t tell you I was staying here precisely because of that tone you can get. Wait. How did you find me?”

“After your home phone took ten of my messages and your pager ignored me, I took a shot. Call me a good detective.”

Dooley wiped the sleep from his eyes. “My pager’s in the car. I hate that thing. That’s one damn good reason to retire early. I’m gonna page myself and chuck it into the Sound.”

“Well, I got you.”

“What’s up?”

“Your idea, about the news search. Well, one of my eager young rookies here did the deed on Friday night. This morning I stop by and find the results on my desk.”

“Anything interesting about the kids?”

“Michael Prentiss won a little league trophy for best batting average.”

“Funny.”

“This next thing may not be.”

“What?”

“We got an interesting hit.”

Dooley leaned back against the sofa and asked, irritated, “On who?”

*  *  *

Breakfast was over. Only Elena and PJ had eaten. Now, standing with Joey and Jeff in one of Camp One Wing’s two empty cabins, they wished they hadn’t.

Elena ran to the cold stove and threw up into the ash can. PJ held her forehead and put a hand on her back, just like her own mother had done for her, and helped Elena wipe her mouth when she was done.

When they turned back toward Joey and Jeff, Elena looked like the rag doll she’d been the day Guy had died, clutched to PJ like she was a life preserver.

“Michael saw what?” PJ asked for confirmation.

*  *  *

A crease dug into Dooley’s forehead when he heard Joel say the name. “Mary?”

“The only instruction I left for the news search was to run the names on the class roster. Her name is on there, too. At the top.”

“What about her is interesting?” Dooley asked.

“Three twenty-two year old articles from some dirtwater daily in Illinois. The Chicago papers picked up the story and ran a few blurbs.”

“About Mary?”

“Yeah.”

“What does Mary when she was...” He did the math quick in his head. “...eight...”
‘Eight was a rough year.’
“...have to do with anything?”

“Maybe nothing,” Joel said. “But you may want to know. Do you want to hear about this or not?”

Not. Not. Not! “Go ahead.”

“I’ll give you the condensed version,” Joel said. “The first article is from The Chaplin Register, June eleventh, nineteen-seventy-four. The heading is ‘Tragedy Strikes Local Veteran’. It says that Joseph Austin, retired Marine Corps corporal and recipient of the blah blah blah for blah blah in Vietnam, was killed yesterday when the pickup truck he was driving ran a stop sign near the county dump and was broadsided by a county sanitation vehicle. Police say blah blah blah and can’t explain why Austin had a loaded shotgun in his vehicle at the time of the accident. Blah blah blah. He leaves behind a wife, Jean Louise, and two daughters, Mary and Julie.” Paper shuffled over the line. “Got that?”

“Her father was killed,” Dooley said. “She told me he was dead.”

“Remember the gun in the truck,” Joel said. “Okay, here’s the next hit. From the next day, June twelfth. The heading on this one is ‘Tragedy Deepens For Dead Veteran’s Family’. Police revealed today that Joseph Austin, killed in blah blah blah, was likely on his way to Corcoran Elementary School to do harm to teacher Franklin Bannister, this after learning from his eight year old daughter, Mary, a student of Bannister’s, that her teacher had been molesting her throughout the school year.”

“What?” Dooley asked, low and mostly in a gasp.

“Yeah,” Joel said. “Now listen to this. This is from the June twenty-first edition. ‘Accused Molester Found Hanged’. Franklin Bannister, arrested June fourteenth and charged with forced oral copulation and numerous other sex crimes alleged by now reluctant victim and witness Mary Austin, eight, of blah blah blah, was found hanged in the shower area in the county jail last evening. Guards surmise that, because of extensive bruising and other trauma, Bannister was likely beaten and lynched by fellow inmates.”

“Jesus,” Dooley said.

“Jailhouse justice,” Joel commented.

Dooley put a hand to his head and pushed it through his hair.

“She didn’t tell you any of this, I take it.”

“No. No, she didn’t.”

“Do you think it means anything?”

“I’m sure it does to her,” Dooley said.

“To the case?” Joel pressed.

“How could it?”

Joel was quiet for a moment. “Reluctant witness. That’s what it said, Dooley.”

“And?”

“Maybe it’s hard for her to talk about things.”

“Because of what happened twenty-two years ago?!”

“Easy.”

“What do you want? You want me to lay this out to her. Bring it up in conversation and ask her if this is why she hasn’t been able to give us much help? Is that what you want me to do?”

Joel breathed loudly. “You’re mad at me.”

Dooley clicked off the phone and dropped it into its holder. He stood and walked to the wall where the pictures of Mary’s family were hung. Pictures of her past. Her father.

Dead now. Dead because of righteous anger.

Dooley turned away from the photos and went to the piano. He leaned on its blunt end, his thoughts afire. Hate raged in him, hate for a person long dead now. A person who had hurt Mary.

“Would you expect her to be happy about telling the story?” Dooley asked the room in Joel’s absence. “About testifying?”

Shit, no.
Joseph Austin had the right idea, Dooley thought, his policeman’s civic concern gone now. He had it right. Take care of the bastard himself.

‘...they’re quite capable of handling their own problems.’

Dooley’s eyes came up as that recollection surfaced.

So, she had said that. Was that a bad thing?
You sure thought it was.

He shook off the thought and went to the business end of the piano and sat at the keyboard. His heart was in his throat, and thumping away pretty good. He was sucking air through his nose in long, hissing breaths.

Shit
, he thought, hating Joel, really hating him for saying what he’d said. For connecting some stupid comment from a two decade old dirtwater daily with Mary and who she was now. Reluctant witness! His head shook.

He would have to ask her. “Dammit!”

One finger stabbed at the keyboard, lifting a low, flat, sour note.

“You knew I’d have to ask,” Dooley said as he stared at alternating colors of the ivories. “You knew if you told me I’d have to.” His fingers began pecking at the instrument, making ugly sounds. “Fuck you, Joel. Fuck you!”

His hands moved along the keyboard, the thick index fingers on each stabbing away, banging caustic notes from the big instrument’s offended innards. This was what Mary did to relax, and he certainly needed that right now, so why not? It surely didn’t sound as good as the melodies she could craft, but what did sound matter? What did sound matter at a—

Dooley’s hands stumbled over each other at the low notes. At the lack of sound from one particular note. He didn’t know music very well, but as his finger tapped the key again and got only a dull thud in response he guessed that it was a low A.

He stabbed the key again and again and got only dead notes for his trouble.

A dead note.

His eyes bugged.

The striker wasn’t hitting anything. Wasn’t hitting a string. A string that was really a wire.

No.

Dooley stood slowly and went to the side of the piano. He lifted its shiny black lid and propped it up like a car’s hood with the stick designed for that purpose. He bent forward, leaning over the guts of the instrument, and walked his fingers over the strings, the wires, each one an unseen center fiber wrapped by a tightly wound metallic coil. Just like a cable.

No, dear God, please.

His fingers felt along the humming landscape of wires until they came to a space where none should be. A hole.

He reached with one hand and tapped the key.

The striker thumped against his probing fingers.

“Oh my God, Mary,” Dooley said aloud as he backed out of the instrument. He felt pieces of his person cracking and breaking away. “What have you done?”

*  *  *

Mary stood at the coffee maker in the nearly empty dining hall and held her cup under the spigot. She moved the lever in short bursts, afraid that the cup might move away and leave her hand beneath the flow of scalding liquid. She was fearing shadows now. The shadows of old things come back.

Her cup less than half full, Mary turned to see a pair of camp workers pushing wide brooms across the polished plank floor. Little dust billows swirled in their wakes.

She moved her eyes warily left, slow, and right, slow, and sipped at her coffee.

hotenoughMARY

The cup teetered in her grip and tumbled to the floor, splashing the hot contents against the legs of her jeans. She jumped back and let out a small, frightened shriek. The camp workers stopped pushing their brooms and looked at her.

“I’m sorry,” Mary apologized. Her words sounded thin in the cavernous hall. “I’m sorry. I’ll clean it up.”

letstalkMARYletstalk

No!