Malice (27 page)

The room descended into a stony silence. All eyes turned to Sheriff Crow.

“You’re already grounded for a year,” he said with forced calm. “You wanna go for the rest of your life?” He looked over at Alex. “Go get Lysander and bring him back here. And you,” he said, pointing at Samantha, “you’re staying right here till we get back. I better not so much as find out you left that chair.”

He stood up to leave the room.

Samantha crossed her arms over her chest defiantly. “And where are you going?”

“I’m gonna get Reverend Small.”

“Dad, be careful, he’s dangerous.” Her voice sounded desperate. She was beginning to wonder if this was the last time she would see her father alive.

“So am I.” He smiled and motioned for Jeff to follow him.

Jeff cocked his hand into the shape of a gun and pointed it at Alex. There was a gleeful look on his face. “We’ll see you back here in one hour.”

Samantha sprang to her feet. “Alex, you gotta take me with you. Lysander doesn’t trust you. If you show up alone, he’s liable to hide. It’s a big house. You’ll never find him.”

Alex shook his head. “Can’t do it.”

“It’s not like him to do something like this. He must be in danger.”

She could feel his hesitation, and she thought if she pushed hard enough he would give in.

She put her hands together. “Pleasssssse—”

“Sam, I’ve betrayed your father enough for one lifetime. You saw him. If I so happen to piss the wrong way, I’m through. And it doesn’t exactly help that Jeff takes every chance he can to fill the old man’s head with trash about how incompetent I am.”

“My dad loves you, Alex. You’re one of the family. You’re like a son to him.”

He went to the gun rack by the back wall and fumbled with the key. He was saying something as he unlatched the door, swinging it open, asking if there was anything she needed while he was getting Lysander. On the desk behind him his nightstick lay between an empty styrofoam coffee cup and a yellow file folder. The same nightstick he had reached for when Derek had resisted arrest. How long ago that seemed now.

She could not stay here another minute. Every second lost meant Lysander was in more danger. Sam made a decision; perhaps a decision she had made the moment her father had walked out that back door.

She picked up the nightstick and crept behind Alex. He was still unlocking his shotgun, waiting for her to answer his question. The room was so quiet, the fluorescent lights buzzed loudly overhead. He started to turn around and heard a dull whacking sound as the aluminum made contact with the back of his skull. His legs gave out from under him, and he spilled onto the ground. There would be hell to pay, she knew, but the more she thought it over, the more she understood that Lysander was in serious trouble. She reached into Alex’s pocket and pulled out a large key ring. She then unsnapped the leather strap on his belt and removed his revolver. She had never used a gun before, not even for target practice. Her fingers trembled as she held it. The steel was heavy and cold in her hand. Death at her fingertips. She hoped she would have no reason to use it, but if the reverend reared his ugly head, without the slightest hesitation, she would blow it off.

She hurried out to the parking lot behind the station.

Two police cruisers were parked side by side. The first belonged to Alex, the other to Jeff. Her father would have taken his own cruiser for sure—he hated being chauffeured around. She slid behind the wheel of Alex’s cruiser, laid the gun on the seat beside her and tried to think what to do next. Her father had always driven her around, had always chided her about not getting her license right away,

You never know when you might need it.

She tried to laugh, but her throat was dry and scratchy. How hard could this be really? she thought. She held down the brake and turned the ignition. The engine rolled over.

Easy enough
.

She draped an arm across the passenger seat—as she had seen her father do so many times before—stuck it in reverse and nudged the gas. The car began to back out of the parking spot. But in her excitement to leave, she had turned the wheel too soon. She winced at the sound of grinding metal as her fender raked the side of Jeff’s cruiser.

“Shit!” Her hands fumbled to put the gear shift into drive. Suddenly the possibility occurred to her that Alex might wake up and cut her off before she could get to Lysander. She shoved the car into park, flung open the glove compartment and searched around frantically. Her hand touched something hard and she pulled it out. It was a switchblade. Samantha got out of the car and bent before each tire of Jeff’s car, jabbing fiercely.

The cruiser hissed in defiance as it slowly sank onto four rims. She dashed back to the car and pulled out of the parking lot.

As she approached the McMurphy place, she sped up, snapping the long chain that blocked access to the dirt road leading to the house.

She came at last to the old McMurphy house. She could see soft light coming from one of the windows. A lantern was on. She smiled, in relief. Lysander had waited for her.

***

Lysander was rubbing his temples. His head was pounding. He felt as if someone had used it to bash down a great oaken door.

His fingers froze over a lump at the back of his skull.

He sprang to his feet with a start and scrambled over toward a full-length mirror, barely aware that he was dragging his left leg behind him.

He saw his reflection and screamed in despair. His voice was different

now—deeper, raspier. He could feel the vibrato throughout his body. But there were other voices as well, voices clearly not his own still ringing inside his head. Like him, they too were stirring, and now with their slumber ended, they wanted him to do awful things. Unspeakable things.

“Shut up! Shut up!” he screamed.

For a brief moment they shrank away.

Think, Lysander. Think, goddammit
.

He struggled to settle his mind.

“McMurphy’s,” he remembered. “He’s gone to McMurphy’s …”

There was a chance that Samantha had not fallen for the reverend’s call. If he was lucky, she would have seen through the façade. But he knew that was wishful thinking. He knew that if a grenade had rolled in at their feet, she would have jumped on it in a heartbeat, if it meant saving his life.

He scanned the room and noticed something was missing. The area carpet where Avery had lain was saturated with blood, pooled in two great circular patterns. Another stain led from the carpet toward the open office door and around the corner. But nowhere was Avery.

How long had he been out for? He looked up and saw that it was still dark outside. Surely he couldn’t have been out more than thirty minutes. An hour tops. His left leg was as stiff as hell. He tried bending and stretching it back into shape, but every movement sent fiery bolts of pain coursing through his body—or more accurately, through the reverend’s body.

Lysander ambled out of the room and up the stairs. He remembered Samantha’s triumphant expression at having jabbed that knife into the reverend’s leg, and the irony of that exhilaration came back to him now with every step.

The Honda in the driveway was gone. That meant for sure he was already at the McMurphy place, waiting for Samantha. Lysander rushed to the phone and dialed home. His father answered. The old man sounded irritable. Had he been drinking?

Lysander began to speak but trailed off.

“Hello?” his father said with annoyance. “Who’s there?”

Lysander could hear the television blaring in the background. Sam wasn’t there. He hung up and called the police station. It kept ringing. He switched the phone to his other ear. The left one, he had begun to notice, didn’t hear so well. He let it ring about ten times and then hung up.

Shit.

There wasn’t time to dilly-dally. How the hell was he going to get to McMurphy’s before—

His eyes lit up.

The garage!

He hobbled though the kitchen, recalling how that first day Avery had been working on his MGB. He had even boasted that it was nearly finished. With growing anxiety, he swung open the door and snapped on the garage light. There it was: low red frame, white racing stripes.

Hot panic rose into his face as he searched for the keys.

Come on, come on!

The glove compartment was locked and they weren’t in the ignition.

Of course not, why would they be?

Could they have been in Avery’s pocket? he wondered. He hoped not, since that spot on the floor where Avery had fallen had been empty when he woke up.

He hobbled back inside. He would check by the front door for a key rack. But when that too came up empty he slumped to the ground in despair. Then something clicked.

On Lysander’s first visit, Avery had taken him in through the garage, hadn’t he?

He ran to the garage door and found a small wooden rack mounted on the wall. Two sets of key chains hung there, side by side. One of them bore three letters. MGB. He stood staring at it as a thirsty man might stare at a shimmering mirage. Then he snatched it from the rack.

Once he had heaved open the garage door, he maneuvered himself painfully into the front seat. His heart sank to the soles of his feet when he looked down at the stick. The car was standard. He barely knew how to drive an automatic, let alone a standard. His left foot went to the clutch and depressed it. He turned the ignition and the engine thundered back at him, deep and gorgeous.

Then a curious thing happened. He held down the clutch again, put it into first and shot out of the driveway. The road came up at him quickly and Lysander shifted into second before taking a hard right. With the sound of squealing tires, he left behind him a fading cloud of white smoke.

He did it with the facility of someone who had driven all his life. Shifting from third to fourth, he caught his reflection in the rearview mirror and saw the reverend’s face staring back at him again. The very idea took some getting used to—something he didn’t want to get used to. Speeding toward James McMurphy’s crumbling excuse for a house, he realized it wasn’t really him who knew how to drive standard. It was the reverend and the thought that he was drawing on that experience made him shudder.

Five minutes later, he came to a midnight blue pickup truck askew across the road. The driver’s side door was ajar. A pair of legs sticking out. Lysander pulled up and got out. The scene looked fresh since the pickup’s engine was still ticking. As he drew closer, he heard someone moaning from inside the cab. He stuck his head in and couldn’t hide the look of surprise on his face. “Chad?”

The pale figure looked up at him, his face brightening at the sight of the reverend’s trusted face.

“Reverend Sma …” He tried to get the words out, but his head fell back. His hands were cupping his right side. Thick matted blood oozed from between his fingers.

Two thoughts fired across Lysander’s mind simultaneously. The first was that he didn’t have time to help. If he left Chad here, surely someone would find him and bring him to a hospital. Right? The second thought, however, was strangely foreign. The shadowy parts were back again, clawing at the circuitry of his brain—no, it was the reverend’s brain, he reminded himself—wanting him to stick his fingers into the fleshy wound and rip Chad’s side open. That second thought, vile and disturbing as it was, helped to make up his mind.

Grunting and heaving, he wrenched Chad from the pickup. Lysander staggered to the MG with Chad’s limp form in his arms. Blood had pooled by the pickup’s accelerator in such a great quantity that Lysander wondered how Chad wasn’t dead already.

“Chad! You gotta help. I need you to walk.”

Chad nodded his head. But his eyes where rolling up into his skull. Lysander shouted at him and somehow that got his legs moving a little. They made it at last and Lysander flopped him over and into the backseat. There was no time for delicacy. He would drive him to his house and have his parents call an ambulance. As they pulled away, Lysander tried to keep him conscious.

“What happened? Chad! Look at me! What happened to you?”

Chad’s cheeks were ashen. His lips cobalt blue. He was babbling incoherently.

Lysander reached back and slapped him in the face. He was surprised at how little pleasure he derived from the act, but that didn’t stop the voices from demanding more.

Again! Harder!

STOP IT!

“Chad, what happened?”

“Was gonna teach that little freak a lesson…saw him…driving. Cut him off…Oh, I’m sorry, Ma, I’ll clean it up, I promise. I’ll be good, you’ll see …” His voice was drowned out by the MG’s engine.

Lysander reached back with one hand and grabbed Chad by the scruff of his neck. Chad’s eyes grew wide for a moment.

“Lysander. Was that who you cut off?”

Chad nodded absently.

“If you get outta of this, you promise me you’ll leave Lysander alone. He’s never done anything to you. He’s just different, that’s all.”

Chad’s head lolled back, his eyes fluttered, then closed.