Hard Rain (45 page)

41

Jessie drove down out of the hills, back across the Hudson, up into the Berkshires. Snow fell around her, thicker and thicker, wrapping her in a silent, floating, white cocoon. She was alone in it with her ex-husband's body in the backseat.

The wind blew harder as Jessie climbed into the mountains. It found every chink in her car, tossed plumes of snow through the headlight beams, sent drifts licking across the road. There was no question of driving fast; it was all she could do to keep the car on the road. She saw no sign of the black van ahead of her, saw no other cars at all until she reached Morgantown.

She drove to the 1826 House, but didn't enter the parking lot. Snow was drifting across it, three feet high in some places; and piling up in front of the doors. No lights shone in rooms 19 or 20 or in the office. And the Blazer wasn't there.

Jessie turned around, retraced her path for a few hundred yards, then took the Mount Blackstone road. It was narrow, steep and winding. The air grew colder, the wind blew stronger. Her lights ended in a fuzzy glow of yellow and white a few feet in front of the car. Her tires whined as they fought for traction. Jessie made the mistake of stepping on the gas. The tail swung out, clipped a snowbank; then the car slid helplessly to the other side of the road, finally stopping in a small clearing, buried to the hubcaps.

Jessie got out. She waded out of the clearing and onto the road, hunched forward against the wind. Jessie was aware of it tearing through her thin clothing, but she didn't feel the cold. Her attention was focused on two blinking red lights, farther up the road.

When she drew closer, she saw they didn't come from the van, but from a small car halted before a massive drift blocking the road. The engine was running; Jessie could hear it, although she couldn't see the exhaust—the wind whipped it away as fast as it came out of the tail pipe. She approached the driver's door. Music found its way out of the car into the night, but Jessie couldn't see who was listening: a thin layer of snow covered the window. She brushed it aside and looked in.

Two figures embraced in the front seat. Eyes opened, saw her. A woman screamed. Jessie stepped back. The door opened. A tall man got out. Jessie recognized him from the ceremony at the memorial, but she could tell he didn't recognize her.

“What is it you want?” he said.

Before Jessie could answer, a woman spoke from inside the car. “It's her again,” she said. It was Alice Frame.

“Her?” he said. The wind rose. His voice rose to match it.

“Yes. The one who got me so upset.”

“Oh,” said the man. He looked at Jessie, eyes narrowing with irritation.

She pushed past him and leaned into the car. Alice Frame sat in the passenger seat, huddled in a thick fur. She looked up at Jessie, fear and anger in her eyes. “I've got bad news,” Jessie said. “About your son.”

“How could there be bad news about my son?”

“There is,” Jessie said. She felt the tall man trying to pull her away and shook him off. “You'd better come,” she said to Alice Frame.

“Oh, God,” Alice said. “It never ends.” She got out of the car.

“Don't do anything she says,” the tall man told her.

“Just hold my hand, Jamie,” Alice said to him. He did, but he put his leather glove on first.

Jessie led them down the road to the little clearing. The wind should have been at her back now, Jessie thought, but it was in her face again. She thought about that instead of about what she was doing to Alice Frame. She had to be sure.

Jessie opened the rear door of her car. The overhead light went on. She stepped back. Alice looked in.

Three waves swept across her face. They would change it forever. The first was recognition. The second was horror. The third had no name that Jessie knew.

“What's going on?” the tall man said.

Alice went to her knees in the snow.

“Who is that?” the tall man said, peering in the car. “Is he drunk or something?”

Alice began to wail. “He came back, he came back.” She looked up, blinking, at Jessie. “He was alive the whole time.”

Jessie shook her head. She was shaking it at the first statement, but maybe it applied to the second as well. She turned to the tall man.

“Did you see a black van go by?”

“How could anything go by? The road's blocked.”

“How long were you parked there?”

“Why do you want to know?”

Alice screamed, “Answer her!”

He made his voice a little more polite, but he didn't answer the question. “Why do you want to know?” he repeated.

“Because the man who killed him is driving that van.” She looked at Alice. “And he's got my daughter tied up inside. Your granddaughter.”

Alice gazed at her in the weak glow cast by the car's interior light. Tears were freezing on her face. Jessie could see that she didn't fully understand, but that she knew a world of many possibilities was opening up before her. They were all bad.

Jessie bent down and helped Alice to her feet. There was no strength at all in Alice's body. “We're going to need your help,” Jessie said to the tall man.

“For what?”

“He may have gone up to the cabin before you came.”

“Who may have? I don't understand a word you're saying. All I know is you come harassing Alice with your questions, then you bring a … a dead person here and start handing out commands.” He paused and looked at his watch. “I think the best thing I could do would be to get the police.”

“There's no time,” Jessie said.

He ignored her. “Come, Alice.”

Alice wiped her face on her mink sleeve. “You come with me.”

“Now, Alice, you know that's not such a good idea, not with Edmund there. It could lead to all sorts of …” He lowered his voice. “And Maggie thinks I'm out of town.”

Alice flinched, but the pain came and went very quickly. There was nothing more that could be done to her, not tonight. She turned and started up the hill. Jessie went with her. He watched them go.

The higher they climbed the harder the wind blew. It made noises in the treetops, not as high-pitched as howling, but lower, more like moaning. Alice didn't say a word until they came to a narrow lane on their right. Then she said, “Where was he?”

“Do you mean—”

“All those years.”

“California. He has—had—a house in Venice.”

“Venice?”

“California.”

They turned into the lane. The trees grew close together, muffling the wind. Jessie could hear Alice's quick breathing.

“What happened?” Alice said, her voice low and thick.

“They made a deal at Woodstock. A rotten deal.”

Lights shone through the trees. Jessie felt Alice's hand suddenly squeeze her arm, very hard. “Did my husband know? Did he know the whole time?”

Jessie had no answer to that question, although it gave her an inkling into what Ivan Zyzmchuk was doing. But she didn't have time to think it through: that moment they rounded a corner and saw the black van stranded in the snow.

Jessie ran to it. The side door was unlocked. She threw it open with the foreknowledge that no one was there. She didn't need to see the bare plywood platform, burger wrappers, soda cans; or the wire cutters and the few short pieces of copper wire. One glance and then she was running through the snow. Alice called out behind her, but Jessie didn't hear, didn't stop. She was half-aware of a shadow, or maybe two, moving through the trees, but that didn't stop her either. She came to the cabin door.

The door was not fully closed. She smelled wood smoke, heard a voice, a man's voice. She caught only one word: “Daddy.” But she knew that voice. It belonged to Pat Rodney, the man who called himself Bao Dai. And perhaps he was right to; perhaps that's what he had discovered, on his trip across the sea, on his mental trip in the woods: there was no more Pat Rodney.

Softly, Jessie pushed the door open a few more inches and stepped inside. She stood in a big entrance hall; the floor was gleaming pine; skis and poles hung on the walls. Three carpeted stairs led up to an open doorway. Jessie climbed them and looked through.

She saw a big room with windows on three sides, a thick red Persian rug, a dying fire burning in a massive stone fireplace, and three people: Senator Frame, Bao Dai, and Kate. Senator Frame stood with his back to the fireplace. He had a shotgun in his hands. Bao Dai had Kate: one arm around her chest, the carving knife at her throat. The girl had wet her pants. It made Jessie want to kill.

None of them saw her, standing in the doorway. Bao Dai's eyes were on the shotgun; the senator was watching Bao Dai. Bao Dai said, “Put it down. You wouldn't want anything to happen to your boy, would you Daddy?”

The senator's jaw muscles bulged. “I'm not your daddy.”

“Then why did they send you my dog tags?” Bao Dai's pupils had grown so big that the bright blue irises were reduced to outlines, almost invisible. He wiggled the knife, waiting for an answer. None came. Kate opened her mouth as though she would scream, but no sound came. “And what about your cute little granddaughter?” Bao Dai said. “I know you wouldn't want anything to happen to her.”

Jessie took a quiet step into the room, then another, trying to move along the wall behind Bao Dai.

“I have no granddaughter,” the senator said. “I don't know what you think you're doing, but I'm an expert with a twelve-gauge, and I'm not afraid to use it.” He raised the gun into the firing position and sighted along the barrel.

“No,” Jessie said.

Bao Dai and the senator jerked their heads around to look at her. Kate's head moved too, not much, but just enough to break the skin against the blade and send a few drops of blood down her neck. Again her mouth opened, but no sound came. In the next moment Bao Dai had backed against the nearest wall of windows, where he could keep his eye on Jessie and the senator at the same time. He had a big smile on his face. Then Alice walked into the room and the smile broadened.

She moved toward her husband, slow but steady, like a figure in a trance. “You knew everything,” she said. “Everything.”

“I don't know what you're talking about, Alice. You're in my line of sight. We've got a madman in the house.”

“Oh, that we do,” Alice said. “That we do.”

Bao Dai laughed, a high laugh that cracked and went silent. “Put it down, Daddy. We can still be pals.”

The senator stepped to the side, sighted again along the barrel. Bao Dai wiggled the knife. Then Jessie saw the sinews quiver under the skin of his hard forearm.

“No.” She dove at him.

She was still in midair when a cracking sound came from outside. The window shattered on Bao Dai's back. He fell on the red rug. Kate went down with him. Jessie landed on the floor, rolled, and grabbed her. “Kate. Kate. Are you all right?”

Kate didn't answer, but her eyes were open, she was breathing and there was no blood, except for Bao Dai's.

Cold wind rushed into the room, whirling snowflakes around their heads. A man in snowshoes and a ski suit climbed through the window, a pistol held loosely in his hand. It was Mr. Mickey. He stooped to unstrap the snowshoes. Then he walked across the room, took the shotgun from the senator and laid it carefully on a couch beside him.

“Who are you?” the senator said.

“A friend.” Mr. Mickey rolled Bao Dai's body over with the toe of his boot. His eyes were still open and in death had resumed the striking blueness they shared with his mother's and sister's; the grin was still on his face. Mr. Mickey made a little clucking sound, as though the man on the floor had done something naughty. Then he looked up and said, “It's a little draughty. Why don't we all get closer to the fire?” He didn't raise the gun; he didn't put it away, either.

“You still haven't told me who you are,” the senator said.

Alice's eyes went to her husband, then to Mr. Mickey. They were numb, confused, afraid: the eyes of a dreamer falling through one nightmare to another.

Mr. Mickey said nothing.

The senator said, “I want my gun back.”

“I'm sure you do,” Mr. Mickey said. “But this is what your people would call a damage control situation, I think. An excellent expression—it so well encapsulates the quality of your civilization.” Mr. Mickey paused. He glanced around the room. “Perhaps,” he resumed, “if it were just you … But your wife knows too much. And this woman”—he flicked the pistol at Jessie—“knows much too much.”

“I don't understand you,” the senator said. The Mount Rushmore face was suddenly shining with sweat. “May I remind you that I am a senator of the United States?”

“None of this would be happening if you weren't,” Mr. Mickey said. “Or if it didn't mean so much to you.”

“You're not making much sense.”

“No?” said Mr. Mickey. “Do you know what your code name is in Moscow?” Mr. Mickey glanced around the room again to make sure he had everyone's attention. Then he said, “‘Faucet.'” He permitted himself a smile at the humor of this.

Maybe the senator thought Mr. Mickey couldn't smile and be alert at the same time. Maybe he knew what was coming. Maybe he disliked the code name. He made a move toward the couch—a clumsy move, not very quick. Mr. Mickey had plenty of time to bring the barrel of his gun down on the back of the senator's head. But in that moment, Jessie lifted Kate and ran from the room.

Run
.

Down the three stairs. Into the big hall. But through the front doorway, still partly open, she saw a man standing outside in the storm. Rather, not a man, but snowshoes, legs, shadows. Jessie turned and bolted through a kitchen, past a trussed turkey on the counter and up a staircase. She heard the crack of a gunshot. And Alice's muffled voice saying, “No.” And then another crack.