Bad Radio (14 page)

“You guys were assholes.”

“Damn straight. Wallets?”

“I’m doing it, shut up.” I drove while she went through them carefully, even flexing the empty pieces in her hands to feel for anything sewn inside. “It’s hard to match the things that tried to burn us alive with the owners of these wallets, you know? That big guy was named David Burgher. He’s got a library card in here, and pictures of his kids. Can you believe that? Look at this, he’s wearing some goofy Christmas sweater and everything.”

I glanced at the picture. He was smiling with his arms around two blonde children, a boy and a girl. Next to him was a pretty woman leaning on his shoulder. It was one of those studio portraits that people used to get at department stores for their Christmas cards. I guess they still do.

Anne put the picture down. “Whoever turned him into that thing deserves to die. He was just a regular guy. I wonder what happened to his family.”

“I hope they’re fine and wondering where he is.”

“But you don’t think so?”

I just shrugged. “Where’s he from?”

“His license has an address in Belmont, Wyoming. The library card is from there, too.”

“How about the other one? Same town?”

She rummaged through the other wallet and produced a driver’s license. “Nope. This one, Jeff Grant, is from Columbus, Ohio. Sorry.”

“Dammit.”

“Maybe this Peter guy is just moving around, catching people as he goes.”

“Maybe. But the last time I saw him, he had spent months sacrificing people and stockpiling their blood in a giant pit. That’s not very portable. I’m betting that he’s holed up somewhere with a high enough population to avoid arousing suspicion when people start disappearing. If I had to pick one of the two places, I’d bet on Columbus. I’ve never heard of Belmont, but if it’s not Casper or Cheyenne, it’s probably too small to hide a bunch of murders.”

“Looks like Jeff was a student at OSU. Not too good with the ladies, either.”

“What makes you say that?”

She waved a condom in a wrapper so old that the logo was too faded to read. “My keen deductive skills.”

“That’s pretty good for a girl.”

“Jerk.” She laughed and threw the condom at me. I was fishing it off of the floorboard with a grin when her phone rang. She glanced at the number and flipped it open. “Hi, Henry.”

I watched while she was on the phone. She spent more time listening than talking, but she seemed relieved, so that was good. It was that time of the day when the afternoon sunlight turns gold, between the white of noon and the copper of sunset. Fall trees just beginning to show a few red and yellow leaves stood proud and tall to either side of the black velvet asphalt and swayed seductively in the breeze. The sky was blue like a daydream and the crisp scents of fall filled the car. I felt happy, comfortable in my skin, and at peace.

Anne closed the phone and looked over to see me watching her. “Henry and Leon are on the way to the hospital. He says that Leon’s back really is broken, but that he’s stable now and out of danger.”

“That’s good.”

“He also said that the surprise in Leon’s trunk turned out to be a couple of M16s that they somehow smuggled off the base. He wrapped them in plastic and buried them behind the house.”

I whistled. “Those would have come in handy. What else did he say?”

She hesitated. “Nothing, really.”

“Ah, that means it was about me.”

She turned away and looked out the windshield. We rode in silence for a few miles. “He wanted to know how you smelled.”

“Because the big worm didn’t attack me when I peeled it off of Leon?”

“Among other things.” She looked uncomfortable. Not scared, exactly. Wary.

“Hey, it’s me. We’re in this together, right? What did he say?”

“He told me that you’d be happy right now, cheerful.”

“And that’s bad?” Cold fingers touched my spine.

“He said that you were different after he pulled you out of that pool. That when you were coming into Warsaw, you were trying hard to avoid enemy patrols. But on the way out, you … weren’t. He also told me that he saw you fighting a German soldier, a young boy, and you were laughing.”

I remembered. “He didn’t use the word fighting.”

“No.” She looked away. “He said killing.”

I don’t know why I confessed at that moment. First I had confided in her the truth about my age, and now I was telling her my most secret shame. Something I hid even from Maggie when she was alive. I didn’t intend to do it, but things just started coming out of my mouth.

“I didn’t used to enjoy it, before the pit. No, that’s not right. I’d get pissed at something or somebody, and it would feel good to let off some steam, same as anybody, but it never amounted to anything serious. But after Henry pulled me out of that blood, it became something else.

“After that, everything was just an excuse to let go. At first I didn’t even realize it. I honestly thought that I was reacting reasonably to extreme provocation, and that there was no reason to feel bad about what I was doing. It took my friends rubbing my nose in it for me to understand what was happening, and to be ashamed of it.

“I’m still me, I think. I’m not angry at more things, just more angry at the same things. And I can control it, mostly, but sometimes I go too far.” I didn’t say why out loud. I didn’t say that sometimes it felt too good to stop. That I couldn’t.

She nodded and said, “Okay.”

I knew that I needed her help, but I said it anyway. “We should part ways at the airport.”

She shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere, Abe.”

“Why not? Henry told you that I might be crazy or dangerous, or both. And honestly? I can’t say he’s wrong.”

“Because he also said something else.”

“Which was?”

“He said to trust you. And I do.”

I let out the breath that I had been holding. “Might not be smart.”

“You mean smart like when I decided to help you chase down a guy who makes his own serial killers? I don’t think you have to worry about me doing the smart thing all of a sudden.”

“For what it’s worth, I’ve never turned on my friends.”

She smiled. “Good to know.”

“Now, if that’s settled, tell me how I smell.”

She reached across the cab and took my hand. Her fingers were warm and firm across my palm. She raised my hand to her face and inhaled deeply. “There’s a faint smell like them, but mostly you smell like a thunderstorm. Like lightning.”

“Patty used to call it ‘goosey.’ I’ve heard him describe that smell about other things. The lightning smell, not the bag smell.”

She gave my hand a squeeze and then let it go. “I thought you said that unnatural things smelled bad. Are you saying now that some do and some don’t? What, like evil smells bad and good doesn’t?”

“I asked him the same thing. He told me that good and evil didn’t exist, but wrong did. Some things don’t fit in here, their existence isn’t compatible with ours. They shouldn’t exist at all. Wrong smells bad.”

“So there are other things out there that don’t smell bad?”

“Most things, I would guess. Not everything we tracked down was wrong for this world.”

“Like what?”

I shook my head and smiled. “I said they fit in here, I didn’t say they were pleasant.”

I felt content, maybe even happy. It wasn’t all the afterglow of the violence, either. I was alive again. I was out in the world, and I wasn’t alone. It felt damned good.

14

I
had expected more trouble getting the police shotgun through airport security, but it turned out to be easy. It was unloaded and in a checked bag, so after a minimum of fuss and some paperwork, into the cargo hold it went.

Harder was taking the altar piece with me in my carry-on duffel. It radiated a sick dread that seemed to affect everyone around me. By the time we landed, the passengers and stewardesses were so close to bloodshed that the captain ordered everyone to their seats and cancelled drink service.

It seemed not to affect Anne and myself outside of making us uncomfortable, which made me wonder if being tainted by the unnatural made us more resistant. In any case, I couldn’t wait to be rid of the greasy, evil thing.

We rented another car and then stopped at a big discount store to get shotgun shells and ammo for my .45. Guns you can check pretty easily, with ammo it’s better to just buy it when you land.

Afterwards we had dinner at a vegetarian Indian restaurant. Anne was smug about dragging me in there, but the joke was on her, the food was delicious. By the time we were done it was getting late, so I checked us into a hotel.

You don’t go visiting elderly widows at midnight unless you’re looking for jewelry and pain killers. The hotel didn’t have adjoining rooms, so we got one with two beds. Safety won out over privacy.

The room was cheap, but clean. The carpet was mint green and the walls were yellow, but the room lamps weren’t bright enough to make it painful. I let Anne have the shower first because I like to think that I’m a gentleman. I stared at the ceiling listening to the sound of the water while I waited for my turn.

Shad’s narrow, rat-like face scowled at me from my memory. “I know,” I said under my breath. “The point of no return is coming up.” I began to weigh the lives of a lot of people that I didn’t know against the life of one girl I barely knew. It should have been easy math, but I guess I’m as selfish and shortsighted as the next person.

On the one hand, I felt responsible for whatever mayhem Piotr was up to these days, since I didn’t try to stop him when I had the chance. On the other hand, I increasingly felt the irresistible tug of life, and being able to confide in someone who knew my secret was a big part of it.

The fact that she was smart, funny, and beautiful didn’t hurt, either. Could I sacrifice her well-being, maybe even her life, in pursuit of righting an old wrong? Was it right to let countless people die to protect her, or did the greater good demand whatever sacrifice might be required?

I assumed that I wasn’t going to be coming back, but then I knew more than she did about what we would be facing. It’s one thing to hurl yourself onto a suicidal course with understanding and intent, but blindly following someone you trust down that path is something else entirely.

I heard the shower shut off, and Anne came out with one towel wrapped around her head and another around her body. She padded across the carpet and began digging around in her duffel. “Turn around.”

“You’re getting dressed in here?” I turned my back to her just in time to hear the towel drop to the ground.

“Well, you’ve already seen my ankles, there’s no mystery left now.”

“Very funny. I’m not
that
old.”

“Okay, I’m done.”

I turned back around, only to find that she was wearing nothing but a thin T-shirt and panties. “I thought you said you were done?”

“You were expecting a housecoat, maybe? I wasn’t planning on sharing a room with anyone when we bought clothes, and this is how I sleep. You’ll survive.” She put her damp towels in the bathroom, then slid into her bed, pulling the covers up to her chin. “There, happy?”

“Only if you go up another foot.” I took my shower.

A sound woke me. Red numbers floated next to my bed in the dark room, illuminating nothing. Icy dread gripped me as I became convinced that somehow a worm-infested killer had snuck into the room while we were sleeping. I listened hard, and I heard the sound again. It was a low, harsh gasp, and a faint rustle of bedclothes. It was coming from Anne’s side of the room. I slipped out of bed, my eyes perfectly at home in the dark as always.

Anne’s head was thrashing back and forth on her pillow and her hands were clutching and wrenching at her sheets. Her eyes were closed, but her face was filled with fear. She was whispering “please” and “no” over and over in her sleep.

I put my hands on her shoulders and said, “Anne?” Her eyes flew open and she screamed. She tried to throw herself out of bed, but I held on tight as she struggled. “Anne! It’s me. It’s Abe. You’re okay. It was just a nightmare.”

“Abe?” She sagged, suddenly limp. “Can you turn on the light? Please?” After I did, she searched my face, squinting in the sudden light, and then threw her arms around me. She held on tight, forcing me to sit down on her bed next to her. I held her in return. She trembled and cried silently.