Deceived (27 page)

It was Boyd Martin.

11:00 a.m.

House.

No one.

Alone.

Good.

I did it
,
Mama. And there’s no catching up with me. There’s no hell to
pay
,
like Miller Jones used to tell us. Remember that
,
Mama? Remember?

There isn’t a hell
,
Mama
,
but if there was he’d be there. That’s the only
place for a man like him. And if there’s a heaven
,
well then I guess Arty
deserves to be there.

Where does that leave us
,
Mama? Where do we go when we die?

Pushing up daisies
,
like they say?

I think we just go to sleep and don’t wake up.

They never thought we were good enough
,
you or me. Remember that?
They never thought we were good enough to walk in their air or rub up
against them.

Remember the time that lawyer from the center of town came in when
you were working at the diner? I was there
,
drinking a Coke in the corner
and looking at my schoolwork.

That lawyer
,
everybody knew him
,
but I can’t even remember his name
now. I just remember how he used to walk up and down the street
,
going
to the post office
,
talking to people
,
only it seemed like he was letting the
people talk to him
,
just talk to him.

When you gave him the eggs
,
they weren’t just right
,
the way he wanted
them to be. And he yelled at you
,
Mama. Remember? He screamed his head
off and treated you like dirt.

They can’t do that to us anymore.

Never
,
never
,
never. I will never let them. Never
,
never
,
never.

And then she heard the rain.

It started out like tiny tap-dancing feet on the roof, then quickly turned to a million marbles.

Liz ran to the window and looked out. This didn’t happen in LA. This was a Mississippi storm.

So quick and hard.

The mud.

The jewels.

She had to get the jewels
now.

Liz cursed at the sky and ran for her keys.

11:01 a.m.

“Who’s in there?” Boyd said.

“A guest,” Rocky said. “Now get out.”

“I want to meet your guest,” he said and started past her. She stepped in front of him. He had beer breath. He had crazy eyes, too. He raised his hands like he was about to push her.

From behind her Mac said, “How you doin’?”

Boyd’s half-sotted face grew hard. “A guy, huh?”

“Boyd, this is Daniel MacDonald. He’s a friend.”

Mac stuck his hand out. Boyd ignored it.

“Tell him I want to talk to you alone,” Boyd said.

“He’s here on business,” Rocky said. “And I don’t want to talk to you anyway.”

“Come on, babe, I came all the way — ”

“It’s okay, friend,” Mac said. “Tomorrow is another day, like they say. She’ll call if she wants to see you.”

Boyd just stared at him. Rocky couldn’t help noticing they were almost exactly the same height and build. She could almost smell the testosterone shooting into the room, like gas through a pipe.

Then Boyd said, “Why don’t you get out?”

Rocky said, “Boyd, please — ”

“I’m talking to him.”

“Now look,” Mac said.

“You look,” Boyd said. “You don’t get out, I’m gonna get mad. You want to see that?”

“I don’t want to fight you,” Mac said.

“Just go!” Rocky said. She put her hands on Boyd’s chest and tried to turn him around. He didn’t turn. He grabbed her shoulders and pushed her into the wall.

The moment she hit it, the side of her head thunking, she saw Mac move like a big cat. With an almost balletic grace, he grabbed Boyd’s right arm and twisted it behind his back. Mac’s left arm wrapped around Boyd’s neck.

It was obvious Boyd was rendered fully and completely powerless. The only thing he could do was curse, which he started doing in earnest.

Mac pulled with his left arm, choking off the words.

“No more of that,” he said, then started guiding Boyd toward the apartment door. He called to Rocky to open it for him.

She did, then followed as Mac escorted him to the stairwell.

As they went, Boyd fought to say something or do something. But each time he did, Mac would apply some kind of pressure and Boyd would stop.

“Now you just listen,” Mac said, heading down the stairs. “No hard feelings here, but you have to stop this kind of thing.”

Boyd grunted, fought, was restrained again by Mac.

Mac said, “Believe me, pal, I know what you’re going through.”

More struggle, more pain for Boyd. They reached the bottom of the stairwell.

“And the only thing that helped me,” Mac said, “was admitting to myself that I was a permanent jerk, and if I didn’t turn my life around, I’d be dead.”

Mac aimed Boyd toward the double front doors of the apartment building. Rocky hurried over, opened them. A hard rain was coming down. Mac marched Boyd into it and released him with a hard push.

Boyd shot halfway down the walk, slipped, fell into the grass patch. Cursing now without restraint, he got up and pointed at them.

“Take me inside,” Mac said to Rocky.

“What?” she said.

He put his arm around her and turned them toward the doors.

“What’s wrong?” Rocky said.

“Get me inside before I beat him to death,” Mac said.

11:04 a.m.

Rain streaked the windshield. It was like that scene in that movie
Psycho
that scared her to death the first time she saw it. There was a woman who stole a lot of money and was trying to get away. And the rain came down and she could hardly see out the window of her car.

When she finally saw something, it was that creepy motel where she got cut to pieces.

It occurred to Liz that she was just like that woman in the movie. And she wondered if she would end up in pieces in a bathtub.

That was called fate, and that’s what you couldn’t get out of. Fate or luck, or whatever. That’s what killed Arty and that’s what was trying to get her.

She looked in her rearview mirror. She wondered if she was being followed. What if a cop was following her? What if they had her on the radar screen?

What if Arty was watching her?

Why did she keep thinking that? Okay, she told herself, it’s all right to feel a little crazy. You just killed a couple of people. You burned up their bodies. You have all kinds of adrenaline rushing through your system. Don’t worry about it. Move on.

Keep moving. Always.

She almost ran into the back of a Toyota pickup. She hit the brakes and skidded on the wet surface of the road. The car fishtailed. That took her into the opposing lane. Oncoming headlights in the overcast late morning almost smashed into her.

The angry honk of the furious driver shattered her ears.

It was raining hard. She kept thinking of the bags she had hidden being washed away in a torrent. She got back on the right side of the road and continued, keeping a steady pace of twenty miles per hour.

She turned into the entrance of Pack Canyon Park. There was nobody in the parking lot. Of course not. It was too wet for the park. Too wet to be hiking.

But not for her.

11:05 a.m.

“You wouldn’t really do anything like that,” Rocky said. Mac was sitting now, back in Geena’s apartment, breathing hard. The red in his face was slowly fading.

“I could,” he said.

“I just don’t believe it. The fact is, you stopped yourself. You didn’t go after him. You came inside with me.”

“I was this close,” Mac said, measuring with his finger and thumb.

“But you didn’t, that’s the thing.”

“Yeah. I guess that’s the thing. But every day I have to fight the thing.”

“But that’s what your faith does, right? Like Arty used to tell me.” Rocky could hardly believe she was saying this. She, who didn’t have his faith, telling him what it meant.

Heaven knows
,
anything goes.

Rocky’s phone buzzed. A number she didn’t recognize.

“This is Eric Lendsian,” the voice on the other end said. “I’m with mall security at The Promenade.”

“Security?”

“Do you know someone named Frederick Towne?”

Uh-oh. “He’s my father.”

“He’s here, he’s disoriented. He says he has a car, but we don’t think he’s in any condition to drive.”

“How did you get this number?”

“He had a union card in his wallet. We called and got routed to another number, someone named Arty.”

“My brother. He died.”

“This was the next number on the contact sheet. Can you possibly come and get him? He wants to go, and we can’t force him — ”

Rocky looked at her watch. “Half an hour.”

“Let me give you my number, and you can call me when you get here.” Rocky wrote it down and clicked off.

She looked at Mac. “I have to drive to the valley. It’s my dad. What else can happen today?”

“I’m going with you,” he said.

11:42 a.m.

This is stupid! Liz thought. The rain was so hard it was almost coming through the umbrella. She had her Nikes on, and all they did was get caked with mud. She stopped every now and again and held her feet out in the rain to wash them off. Then she started walking again.

She reached the high point of the path in about twenty minutes. The place where Arty had fallen. In the gloom she thought she could see his body again, down below. But it was just discolored earth. She thought she heard a voice and spun around. But it was nothing. Just rivulets of water pouring down the hillside because of the rain.

She was cold. Cold and wet. Get the jewels, she told herself. Get them before you die from a stupid cold!

You’ d like that
,
wouldn’t you
,
Arty? You’ d like it that I got dead because
of what I did. They’d all like it.

11:54 a.m.

It was really coming down, the rain. It pounded the top of Mac’s truck, but at least the traffic was moving a little.

And at least he was helping Rocky. He wanted to help her.

He found, in fact, that he just wanted to be with her.

But he told himself not to think that. Because he was not a good choice.

Choices.

He’d been thinking a lot about choices lately. The choices he made that were bad, that still haunted him.

Pastor Jon set him straight on that. While God forgives your sins when you confess Christ, you’re not spared the consequences of your actions. Like King David, when the baby he sired in adultery was taken from him.

Choices.

He had a choice whether to hold up the liquor store that night. He’d had a fight with Athena about money a couple days before, right after he’d been given the runaround by the VA again.

He wasn’t approved for any further surgery, they said. They’d done all they could, they said. Just treat the pain the rest of your life, pal, and good luck to you.

That’s the way he heard it, anyway.

So it’s Christmas, and you can’t get anything for your kid because you blew your only employment right after Thanksgiving. You drink too much, and when your wife gets on you about it, what do you do? Put her in her place, that’s what. Yeah. Because you’re not gonna take that from anybody.

Find a motel. Don’t tell anybody where you’re going.

You’ve got that revolver your dad had, that Colt, and you’ve taken care of it, and it’s sitting there, and you remember that little liquor store you were in once is an easy target. Older Korean couple in the place.

And as you’re sitting there in the car, across the highway, watching the place, waiting for the right time, you think you hear a voice in your head. You get ready for the talons to dig in, but this time they don’t.

This time it’s an actual voice, and it says something like,
You don’t
need to do this.
That’s it. You heard it in your head. And then felt a moment’s calm like everything was going to be all right.

But just then the old Korean man decides it’s the time to run out for something. He gets into an old car at the edge of the strip lot and drives away.

Choices.
You chose to get out of the car.

Mac brought his thoughts back to Rocky. “You’re right about me and Arty,” he said.

“How’s that?” Rocky said.

“It does change everything. Faith does.”

Rocky nodded. “You know, it’s funny. I have a friend who has tried just about every spiritual fad there is, and she hasn’t changed a bit.”

12:00 p.m.

Liz thought, Rain can drive you crazy. Like waterboarding. Like Chinese torture.

Like life. Stupid life.

I am not going to let water get the best of me. I’m not going to let lightning
strike me
,
even if it comes from the hand of God.

Now how do I get to the stones without slipping and breaking my
neck?

She was at the spot now where Arty had fallen.

Are you here
,
Arty? Leave me alone.

No such thing as ghosts.

Money is waiting. Money. You will never have to worry about living
like a redneck again. You will be able to have what you want
,
when you
want it.

She was about to start down the rocks, toward the hiding place. It would be a wet hike but so what?

Then: “Hey!”

It sounded like a rifle shot. Liz turned. In the misty rain, she saw him. Coming toward her.

It was Arty. It was him. He’d been waiting for her.

Ghosts couldn’t hurt you if didn’t let them.

“Hey there!”

Closer. He didn’t look like Arty now. It wasn’t him at all. No, another person. A man.

And they were all alone in the rain.

Don’t be paranoid. Don’t stop moving.

“Listen,” the man said.