Boogie House: A Rolson McKane Mystery (44 page)

In the midst of this, something happened.

A small fire had begun to spread up Jeffrey’s arm in a coiling pattern, very much like one of my visions. It was entirely unnatural, and he had not yet noticed it. But he would.

The next moments passed in some kind of slow motion. Jeffrey raised the piece to finish me off, when another shot was fired. I was losing blood at a pretty rapid clip and felt the shock draining consciousness from me. The room was growing dimmer.

It wasn’t Jeffrey’s gun that had fired.

I managed to hang on to see what happened next. Jeffrey spun around, giving me a head-on view of the Boogie House's entrance. I half-expected Ricky to be the second gunman, but Ricky lay in a heap in the doorway, blood streaming from his broken and twisted nose. His kneecap had been blown away. The man in his place had a gun trained on Brickmeyer, and he was guaranteed not to miss.

About that time, the darkness took me somewhere else, perhaps for the very last time.

Still, I had never been so happy to see Deuce in all my life.

*  *  *

I might as well have had my eyelids sewn shut, because everything was a black, inky color. Something like drowsiness overwhelmed me, and I slid off into a dreamlike state, like the mast of a sinking ship disappearing into the deep.

A shock hit me, and my eyelids popped open. This time, the darkness wasn't quite as impermeable. I was upright. I was trying to walk, but the ground sank beneath my feet. I struggled to keep above ground.

In the distance, a silhouette approached, disfigured in a supernatural way. As the shape approached, it became whole, and I saw that it was not Emmitt Laveau but my mother, who was clad in her burial dress. Her arms were crossed, a baby swaddled in a cream-colored blanket against her chest. She smiled sweetly, as if only an afternoon had passed since I'd seen her.

She had never been so beautiful. We were walking along a darkened path, and I had to pull my feet out of the ground to keep from sinking into its depths.

"You are the spitting image of your father," she said. "Put a white border around you, and it would resemble a picture I once had."

I had imagined this moment for thirty years, and not once had it included talking about my father. "We're different," I managed, gazing stupidly at her face. It had grown blurry and insubstantial in my memory, and seeing it now retouched all of the indistinct parts. The small dabbling of freckles on the bridge of her nose. Her long eyelashes. The intensity of her eyes.

She seemed unfazed by my comment. She said, "He was angry, and you are troubled."

"He was a murderer. Cold-blooded. I'm
nothing
like him. He killed" - and I nodded at the baby hidden under the blanket - "
his
father."

She tilted the blanket in my direction, and the cloth unraveled to reveal an empty bulge, not air exactly but, well,
something
. The absence of something. I nodded, trying to understand, but my mother only smiled, looking older each time I looked at her.

"He wasn't alone."

"I know."

"You don't care about that anyway. You want to see something else. That's why you're here. It isn't to catch up with me."

"I wish there was something to catch up on, Mama. I'm not sure you'd be proud of me."

"Oh, but I am. I see what you're doing right now, and I want to help. It's the least I could do after, well, you know."

"It wasn't your fault."

"I cheated on your father, and I knew him, understood how he would react. I hoped against hope for that baby to be his, and all the while I knew it wasn't."

"Nobody deserves what we all went through, except him."

The light flickered, and my mother stopped walking. "We don't have much time, Rolson," she said. "I wish there was more. But there will be. Someday."

"Have I always had this ability? To speak with the dead?"

"Who said this was real?"

"It has to be real."

Her face became soft with an uncanny light. "It's somewhere in between."

"I wish I could feel something right now. I don't even have the urge to reach out and curl your hair, the way I used to when I couldn't sleep. I can see it - your hair - and I think I could just run my fingers through it, but I don't have the slightest desire to."

"I'm sorry, Rolson. It wouldn't work. We can't just hold hands and wander down the dark path. It just isn't allowed.”

"Why didn't you come to me before?"

"You need me.”

“I’ve always needed you.”

“Follow behind, and make sure to keep up. This isn't going to be pleasant."

With that, she turned and resumed walking. We were no longer standing at the edge of the flickering orange backdrop but rather descending a winding road, black on all sides. I wiped at my eyes, veiled in an almost tangible darkness, and found that we were cascading a steep hill beset on all sides by barren, contorted trees, rough and tangled and savage as the animals I imagined living among them. All of this was a wasteland, eroded and without life, and the longer I peered at it the more indistinct it became.

She moved effortlessly down the path, looking as though she were floating, and I struggled not to sink. I knew where we were, somehow, but my mind could not articulate it. And yet, despite my vague self-awareness, I was determined that I was lost and said so many times, though my mother ignored my pleas.

I should have known I wouldn't be able to keep up, but even I was surprised in a detached way whenever I spilled headlong into the muck and dirt of the path. By the time I reached my feet again, I was truly lost. My mother was nowhere to be seen, and in her absence there seemed to be no path at all, let alone a clear one.

A flash of what might have been lightning cracked the sky, illuminating the jagged landscape around me. I found myself not on a crooked, steep path, but just outside the Boogie House. Only, its walls and ceiling weren't ablaze.

Without warning, a voice so raw it sounded like it had been rubbed with sandpaper called out. "Hello?" it said, and I squinted in the darkness for its source. I saw a dim light strike the back of a young man's head. It was Emmitt Laveau's, and it bobbed once, twice, and a third time before lifting all the way erect.

He sat chained to the old, rusted, disintegrating bar, his breath rasping in his throat. "Is anybody there?" he called, turning his head so that he faced me straight
on. His eyes passed through me with such intensity that I looked away.

"Hello?" he continued. His voice was full of fear and pain. "Can someone hear me? I thought I heard somebody. Can someone help me, please? Please? PLEASE!"

The last iteration seemed to rip something deep in his throat, but it didn't completely silence him. He continued whimpering shallowly, tilting his head forward in order to cry.

Even in the darkness, I saw what a bad state he was in. He'd been beaten within several yards of his life, and when he raised his face again, I saw the welts and cuts and bruises more clearly.

"I'm here," said a voice somewhere nearby. "I've got you, Emmitt."

It was Jeffrey Brickmeyer.

I stood in the doorway and watched.

Laveau stopped crying long enough to show that he recognized Jeffrey. He smiled, and then he broke down again, but the tears were different somehow.

"Oh, Emmitt. Oh my God," Jeffrey said, kneeling next to him. "I can't believe this. Oh my God."

Jeffrey knelt, if a bit timidly, and placed both hands on Emmitt's shoulders. He kissed him, first on his swollen forehead and then on the lips, holding it for a few moments before pulling away. Then he placed his face in the crook of Laveau's neck and sobbed. Finally, Emmitt said, "It's okay, Jeff. Now that you're here, it's okay."

With his face still resting there, in the crook of his neck, Jeffrey nodded. When he pulled away this time, Laveau's eyes maintained a kind of grim focus.

"Okay," Emmitt said, "We've got to hurry. Any minute now, two big-ass men are going to show up. So listen. Stop crying. Listen, look for something around here sharp enough to cut through the tape. Once you get me out of here, we're gone. We can hop in your Beemer and hightail it out of town. That sound good to you, Jeff?"

Jeffrey nodded, but it was half-hearted. When he finally spoke, his voice was weak and watery. "I can't, Emmitt. You know I can't do that."

"Why not?"

Jeffrey paused, as if gathering words that, no matter how he assembled them, would not come out right. "I'm one of his closest advisors, and he's making a run for the Senate this time, the U.S. Senate, and-"

"The hell with your father's career, Jeff," Emmitt countered.

Jeffrey hesitated. His eyes met Emmitt's, and Emmitt screamed, a pained, angry wailing. "
Look
at me, Jeff. Look at me. Goddamn your father, Jeff. He's getting me killed here. Just let go."

Jeffrey swayed on his knees, whispered, as if unconvinced himself. "My father's...not responsible."

Emmitt completely broke down at this. "He's got you pegged, that's all. He knows how to manipulate you. Jesus, he's the reason I've been kidnapped. Somebody wants to get back at your father. How do you think he knows about where I am? Why do you think he told you?"

Jeffrey suddenly stood up. "You lie."

"What do I have to lie about, Jeff? I just want to be with you, with or without your father's acceptance. I could give a shit about that. I just want out of here
right now
. Help. Me."

“My daddy’s a good man,” Jeffrey said.

From my perspective, I could see Emmitt fighting against the eventuality of his tears. His bottom lip quivered and widened into a heartbreaking approximation of a smile. His eyes bore knowledge of what was about to take place, and he struggled to resign himself to it.

Jeffrey screamed a half-scream, half-growl, and slapped Emmitt, which resounded like a gunshot. Then he backed up and waited for a reaction. Emmitt didn't give him one. He rested his chin on his chest and cried quietly, almost sweetly, despite the situation.

"Please, don't," Emmitt began. "Jeff, please. I'm begging you."

This time, Jeffrey punched him. He had aimed for the back of his head, and stumbled backward after it. The punch was weak, without purpose, but it landed nonetheless. "
You
s
top it
! There's nothing I can do. I can't disobey my father. He controls everything I do. He controls
everything
."

Emmitt raised his head and said, "He didn't control us. That happened without his say-so."

"That's different. You know that. I hid it from him, and look what happened."

"What happened?" Emmitt said this flatly and evenly. "What happened? Nothing. Nothing has happened. Yet. He's found out. The men who took me told him, and so now he knows. So what? He can get over it, or we can run away. Personally, I say to Hell with your father."

Jeffrey punched Emmitt so hard that he himself screamed in pain. The rage in the young Brickmeyer had reached a crescendo. I could feel it in the air. I stepped forward, intending on doing, well, something. It felt pointless, even as I approached.

I went right through the both of them. I didn't feel anything, didn't possess either of them, the way they do in the movies. In one side and out the other.

And I didn't stop, either. I just kept on going. I went through the window on the opposite side of the building and followed the path I had chased H.W. Bullen down that first night.

I didn't stay to witness what happened next. I couldn't. I had seen the end result. That was enough. The state of Laveau's body was far worse when I later found him, and I didn't want to see what kind of malice would be visited upon him.

Instead, I waited down the path a ways, leaning against a pine tree, anticipating Brickmeyer's return. Sure enough, minutes later he appeared in a sliver of moonlight, running unevenly toward me. He was crying openly, forever a child. His vehicle lay at the end of this particular row of pines, and when he passed me, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a jangly set of keys. Something dropped to the ground.

I knelt down. The key fob. It was the key fob I thought had belonged to one of Brickmeyer's henchmen or to Brickmeyer himself. It had been Jeffrey all along. He was Emmitt's true killer.

The taillights of Jeffrey's BMW lit up, and moments later it disappeared, kicking up dust in its wake. I stood there in the darkness, alone and bewildered in this purgatory.

So. Hmm. He loved Emmitt Laveau, or at least pretended to love him so that Emmitt, kind and as gentle as he was, became convinced that they were in love.

And maybe that was true. Maybe Emmitt Laveau saw something really special in Jeffrey, and maybe he drew that out in the private moments between them. Thinking about that for even a moment usually cuts the question of “How could he possibly...” right in two.

Those private moments are what grant us love, and they are also what blindfold us to reality, whatever subjective truth is out there.