Joyride (16 page)

“They want me to go outside,” said Wayne. “What do you think?”

They didn’t answer.

It wasn’t fair. He’d been alone all his fucking life, making every decision for himself, and here he was, just asking for a little advice, and it was exactly like living with his mother; they were there but they weren’t there.

“What do you think, dammit?” he said.

They said nothing.

He was writing down their response to him or lack of it in his notebook and dating it carefully when the phone rang. He finished writing.

RETAL.

Then he got up and got it.

She had to use the bathroom.

Her feet were bare on the rug and her legs were very heavy as she slid them down and she was wet, something on her head was wet and she was wet all down her face and down across her body. She had to go to the bathroom and he was on the phone, talking, his back to her, he was a strange blur moving against the white wall that tilted oddly as she rose off the floor and trotted unsteadily barefoot down the hall, using the walls on both sides for support and to keep her balance and feeling giddy, drunk, wanting to laugh and wondering
when had she been drinking?
And then she was in the kitchen, not the bathroom, there was no bathroom here oh hell she was in the
wrong room
but she saw the door in front of her and something told her she should probably no definitely use it.

She turned the knob but the door wouldn’t open.

It was stuck.

It was locked.

That was the problem. The door was locked. And here it was—here was the lock. A little anchor-shaped thing made of brass. She turned it.

It was still locked.

There was a button on the doorknob and you had to turn it button button who’s got the button so she did and turned the knob again and pulled open the door and almost fell down sick to her stomach there on the steps, giddiness turned
to nausea the moment the warm morning breeze hit her face and the sun hit her eyes, a warm blinding slap across the face, and she saw the mowed lawn like a hazy drifting sea in front of her and behind it the sparse row of hedges, and someone in the hedges
—a man—
said
—oh my god.

The man was blurry too but as he stepped out of the hedges she saw the rifle he carried and knew what it was, a gray-white glint of metal in the sunlight and the rifle spoke to her clearly and the rifle said
run.

RUN!

She stumbled on the third step but then she was on the lawn up and running lurching along the side of the house, her bare feet on the grass wet with dew, breeze across her body, realizing her dress was open the man had seen her and clutching it together with one hand and flailing at the hedges with the other because she had somehow stumbled into the hedges and they seemed to want to slap her down so she pushed them away. Go away. Go away you. Running.
The man with the gun
was not going to reach her. She would not let him reach her. He was not going to catch her. Oh no. Not again.

She saw the row of cars ahead of her on the street and she ran toward the cars but the man was getting near her
oh god
he was near and she screamed in panic. She screamed again as she felt his fingers clutch at her arm and then slip off again. The wetness was all over her now running down her all across her body and the dress was open but she didn’t care and she screamed again and fell against the hedge her hands scraping the hard picket fence behind it as the fingers reached out and grabbed her, closed on her arm. Those hard callused fingers on that enormous evil hand that was a man’s hand. He had her.

The man with the gun.

He had her.

Had her over and over again like a film on a loop.

Over and over.

And then the world exploded.

Rule saw the door open and Wayne in the doorway and heard the Magnum roar as the patrolman who had finally reached Carole Gardner slammed back against the picket fence and fell, his shoulder sprayed like mud across the clean white birch, and as he ducked down behind the hood of the car and they opened fire, he was aware that Wayne was yelling something, his mouth was open and the lips were moving while he stood in the doorway firing the .38, standing legs spread wide and then jerking with the impact of the bullets, but still standing and still firing.

He saw Carole fall sideways to her knees, then sprawl out onto the grass. And he thought,
She’s shot! Jesus! Us or him?
After everything else. After a night he could only imagine.

He felt his stomach slide.

He ducked low around the car and began to run.

He knew it would be just like this.

No pain. He felt nothing but impact as the bullets hit him, a shower of tiny meteors, celestial bodies flattening against him, pouring through him, as he ascended through the weighty morning sunlight into the thinner nighttime sky that lay above. He knew that he’d been kind to them. To all those people who owed him their own ascendancy now.

He hadn’t meant to be kind. That was not the idea.

It was an irony that there was so much pleasure.

He didn’t mind. He forgave them all in a way.

All the insects who had ever stung him.

Bless you.

He screamed out his love for Carole Gardner.
“I love you I love you I love you!”
he screamed again and again even though he doubted she could hear him over the gunfire.

He meant it.

Meant it even as he turned the gun on her and fired through the storm of bees the driving hailstones bringing her the gift as the bullets tiny comets slammed home into his body.

She’d shown him the way.

And as the man approached her, he fired once again, at him this time, at the man, and saw him raise his gun and knew in an instant how accurate the shot would be, sighted the trajectory of the man’s bullet even before it left the chamber. He knew it would be a perfect shot, an admirable shot, pinning him there to the door, like a butterfly to paper right between the eyes.

This man, too, he loved.

I was born to love,
he thought.
Just this way.
His final thought before the bullet proved true to its word and Wayne rested.

The street was a hall of echoes.

It smelled like the Fourth of July.

The bullet had passed through the meat of his arm just below his shoulder and exited through the other side. He wouldn’t be able to lift her. He didn’t try.

He stayed on his knees and waited for Covitski and the paramedics.

He felt for a pulse.

He gazed down at her face, saw where the towels had slipped away and the soft-looking wound and realized suddenly that she didn’t look remotely similar to Ann. It wasn’t the wound or the blood disguising her. She never had. He wondered how or why he had ever thought so in the first place.

Situational,
he thought. A resemblance that was strictly situational. Abused women. Drunken husbands.

Had he ever thought otherwise?

The thought that he might have suddenly bothered him.

He couldn’t find a pulse.

Was that why he felt like crying?

“Rule. Can you stand up? Come on. Stand up with me. Let the boys here do their jobs, Joe. Come on.”

Covitski had his arm. He looked up and saw that he was surrounded by paramedics. They had the stretcher ratcheted down and were ready to lift her onto it but he was preventing them from doing so. He was gripping her wrist like his life depended on it.

It was no way to feel for a pulse.

He let her go.

“Sorry,” he said.

And he had no idea at that moment—whether it was Covitski or the paramedics or Carole Gardner—exactly who he was saying that to.

“What time is it?” she said.

Rule looked at his watch. “Nearly noon. Welcome.”

It didn’t feel like noon. Noon was supposed to be hot and the room was cold. There was too much air-conditioning. Of course there was. She was in the hospital.

The room seemed to darken suddenly. A shadow falling.

She ran her tongue across dry, cracked lips.

“What day?”

“Thursday. You’ve been out for over twenty-four hours. You have a concussion. He shot you once in the right thigh. Once in the hip. They removed the bullets and you’re going to be just fine.”

“What…what happened?” she said.

“We got him,” he said. “It’s over.”

“You’ve been here…?”

“Only the past couple of hours. I had to get this taken care of.” He smiled and raised his arm and she saw the sling and the bone white cast. “They just turned me loose, actually.”

“And…Lee…”

He looked at her and she realized she’d known all along. Maybe because he wasn’t there sitting in a chair next to Rule beside the bed. And maybe, more probably, because of the feeling she’d awoken with, that had flung itself over her like one final rape immediately upon
waking—that sense of loss she’d felt, that feeling of being somehow linked to him that had come too late, too deeply and far too late, stunned that somehow this link too had been taken from her before she had even fully realized the depth of it and that now he was gone. No perfect partner. Insane as she had been back then perhaps and certainly wrong as she had been. A deep black hole they had dug for themselves but it was their hole dug for their reasons. He had been her lover. Her friend.

The feel of his hands. The smell of him. The easy silences.

They were friends.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

And he
was
sorry. It wasn’t just something you said to somebody. It wasn’t just formality. She could see that he meant it. She thought that he was probably a very good man. And she had been lying to him forever now.

She thought that he would understand the tears.

“I want you to know something,” he said. His voice was soft, gentle. “I want you to listen to me.

“This man Lock, he had it in for you. He murdered your husband.

“We don’t know why and it doesn’t matter why. Lock was crazy.

“We can place him at the murder site.

“Then he kidnapped you and Lee.

“I want you to know that there is no one who connects you to any of these killings. No one blames you for anything. Not the families of the victims and not the police. You understand that? When they let you out of here you’ll be free to go. You’ll have to make a statement, a pretty detailed statement, but after that you’ll be free. You understand, Carole?”

She hesitated. Were it not Rule sitting here telling her
this, were it anybody else she would not have believed it possible.

She looked at him and nodded. He reached for a tissue on the nightstand beside her and handed it across to her.

“Why,” she said. “Why are you…?”

He stopped her.

“Say it’s because I believe you’ve been a victim here all along. No, let me correct that. I don’t believe it, I know it. We both do. You should try to remember that about yourself. A victim will do some crazy things to stop being a victim, and maybe you did, too. But that doesn’t make you crazy, and it doesn’t make you evil.

“So don’t ask why. When you get out of here, just get on with it. Just get on with your life. Be free.”

He looked away. There was pain in his eyes.

She glimpsed it there just before he turned away.

She did not think it was his wounded arm.

They sat in silence for a while. As though something awkward had just happened between them.

“I’ve got an appointment,” he said finally.

He rose slowly from the chair.

“I’ll be back to see you tomorrow, all right? We’ll talk. Is there anything you need? Anything I can get for you?”

“Thanks. Not right now,” she said.

He turned and walked to the door.

“Oh god!” she said. “The cats. Beast and Vinni.”

He laughed. “Vinni.
That’s
her name. I remembered the other one’s. I meant to tell you. I hope you don’t mind. I just sort of…
adopted
them. Had my partner bring them over to the house. Just for the duration.”

She found that she could smile.

It almost surprised her that she was able to smile.

“I’m grateful,” she said. “Thank you. Thank you for everything.”

He nodded. And for a moment she saw the look in his eyes again as he turned and walked out the door and she thought
So much pain. It was everywhere.

Even in this man who was so kind.

She leaned back into the softness of the pillow. The room was still.

Perhaps she’d sleep. She’d try to sleep.

It was good for her.

It occurred to her that it was possible that she would dream of Lee. Of Lee and not Howard nor Wayne nor any man who had hurt her. She did not believe she would dream of them now. But of him, perhaps.

She thought that it would break her heart to wake up knowing she had dreamt of Lee but it was perhaps a way to thank him and it was a way to remember.

It was so strange that for the first time since she was a little girl she really wanted to remember.

The bed was soft. She settled in.

“So,” Marty said. “You saved the maiden.”

“Please. Don’t start,” said Rule.

“Well you did, didn’t you? And you got the bad guy?”

“Yeah. I did.”

“There. See? Glad to hear it.”

“I’ll tell you something,” Rule said. “I sat there in the hospital looking at her while she was still under and you know what? I realized something.

“All this time I’ve been thinking that Carole reminded me of Ann, situation-wise certainly, and even looks-wise, and that was why it was getting to me, that was why I was having so much trouble with this one and why I was thinking of Ann all the time. But it wasn’t that. It wasn’t Carole Gardner reminding me of Ann.

“It was Wayne reminding me of me. How about that.”

Marty didn’t comment.

He sat back heavily in the chair.

“Me and Wayne,” he said. “You see what I’m getting at? It’s what we do. We hurt things. Not just by being. Not just by walking through life. Everybody does that. You can’t help but do that.

“But by being who we are.”

“Hey Joe. That’s a pretty damn big stretch. You’re not some killer.”

“No, of course not. But I destroy things. Faith. Trust.
Connections. Lives in a way, or parts of lives. Because of
who
I am and
what
I am.

“Me and Wayne.”

Marty studied him a moment.

“There’s a difference,” he said.

“Sure. I don’t go around blowing people away on the highway.”

“I don’t mean that. What I mean is that a guy like this Wayne character, he puts nothing back into it does he. He just takes. You? You do what you can to even things up, maybe even tip the scales a little back toward something positive. Something decent. You do your job. You do what you can.

“You save the maiden.”

“You think that’s enough? I don’t. I can’t.”

“Listen to me. It’s a damn rough piece of business living in the world. Nothing’s
ever
enough. The point is not to give up on it. To do what you
can
do. You haven’t destroyed Ann’s life or Chrissie’s life for god’s sake. Sure you’ve changed them. And maybe not wholly for the best either because it didn’t work out for the best.

“But you think about it—they’ve gotten to know a pretty decent guy. That counts for something.” He laughed. “There aren’t all that many of us around, you know? You’re not dead yet. And neither is she. Lives have a way of getting richer if they don’t stop happening altogether.”

“That which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, huh?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“You think you’re a pretty hot ticket, don’t you Marty.”

“Yeah. I do, Joe.”

He sat back in the chair and lit a cigarette. He was
breaking his own rule about smoking in session. Rule guessed it counted as a special occasion.

“Don’t you?” he said.

At home he fed the cats and called them both by name, petted them when they were finished and followed them into the living room and scratched their ears and looked at the telephone. He went back to the kitchen, did the dishes in the sink and looked down the hall to the telephone and thought about what time it was in California. He left the TV off for a change so that the house was quiet.

He sat down in the living room with a beer in his hand and the cats came by again wanting to be scratched and petted, rubbing up against him, so he obliged them. They began roughhousing, playing. He watched them. The cats didn’t need him anymore. They had each other.

He was left to his own devices.

He got up and walked to the telephone and picked up the receiver and held it a moment and then put it back in the cradle.

He thought,
Not now.

He turned on the outside light and walked out to the garage in the cooling night.

The dollhouse was painted white with black shutters. He had done a good job on it so far and it welcomed him as his own house had not, aside from the cats, and he bent to the tasks remaining—cutting this and building that, making something, shaping something, finishing something, doing what he could do.