[Oxrun Station] The Bloodwind (9 page)

She laughed. She screamed. She drove herself up
right and saw the muted light filtering through the curtains to lie in a cloud across her bed.

It took her five minutes to stop trembling, and five
more before she dared slip her legs over the side and try
to stand. She made no attempt at interpretation, even if
the demons somehow vaguely resembled Danvers. Rather, she stumbled into the bathroom and turned on the shower,
stepped in quickly and closed her eyes until the dream
fell to fragments which were washed down the drain.
Toweled dry and brushed her hair. Wrapped a terry-
cloth robe around her and tied the sash snugly while she
walked into the kitchen and set the kettle on the stove.
Not tea this morning. Coffee, black, as much of it as
she could drink until she was positive she was awake
and wasn't still in her bed, riding the sea, listening to the demons that now, as she thought about it, sounded
frighteningly like the wind.

She looked outside, cup in hand. A good deal of snow
must have fallen during the night: the rose bushes had
lost all trace of their burlap capes, there was little bark
to be seen on the trees, and when she leaned close to
the pane she could hear a shovel working in the driveway.

Good man,
Linc
, she thought with a sour grin, then
turned to the clock and gasped when she saw it was fifteen past nine.

A race, then, to finish her breakfast, to sweep on her makeup, to dress and get halfway to the door before she
remembered that Kelly and Abbey were taking her car
today.
She cursed her generosity and ran back to the
kitchen, dialed their number and cursed again, loudly,
when nobody answered.

"Great," she said to the room.
"Just great."

Neither Greg nor Janice was at home, either, and she
almost despaired until she remembered Harriet.
One
block over on Fox Road.
The telephone book was in the
cabinet under the sink, and she wasted a few moments
looking under the H's until she caught herself, forced
herself to sit down and regain some control.

It was more than the dream that had unnerved her.
And it was more than the wind that had driven her to
her knees. Somewhere, back where she tried to imagine
herself the best possible teacher, she could not quite
believe that Greg had been right, that Harriet and the
two boys were that angry with her simply because she
hadn't gotten them their show as quickly as they'd hoped. Had he been talking about anyone else she
would have had no trouble; Oliver, however, despite his
excesses and his carefully tended temperament, surely
had to be more realistic than that. And even if he
wasn't, there was no way she could imagine dour Ben
holding a grudge. Not against her.
My god, not against
her.

A shuddering
inhalation,
and she dialed Harriet's
number. Six rings later she answered.

"So," Pat said, after explaining her predicament, "you think maybe I could hitch a ride with you?"

There was a hesitation, a murmuring in the back
ground. Then: "Sure, Doc."
Brightly, almost too loudly.
"Give me a couple of minutes, okay? I got to get my stuff together. Gee, you really shouldn't lend your car
like that, you know? My pop always screams when I do
something like that. Like I was lending it to Bonnie and
Clyde, you know?"

Pat told her she understood,
then
mentioned the weather
and the snow and what they would be doing in class
today until finally, several minutes after she'd begun,
Harriet cut her off politely.

"Doc, we're never going to get there, you know
,
if I
don't start now. Though I guess it won't make any difference if I'm late, will it? I mean, you're my first class and since you're coming with me, I guess it doesn't make any difference at all."

"You're right," Pat said, and rang off, leaned back
in the chair and put a palm to her forehead. Shifted it to
her throat, to the table, and watched the veins rise
slowly on the back. It always happened when she was
tense, or when she'd avoided something she'd feared
might be unpleasant. Like asking Harriet if she'd known where the boys had been last night, or if it was true they
were all so disappointed with her that they were slip
ping away.

She hadn't asked because she hadn't wanted to hear
what the girl would say.

And in that moment she felt a rush of indignation against Greg, for planting a seed that refused to be
dislodged no matter how hard she tried.

"Hell!"

She took her time fetching coat and gloves and muffler, spent a useless ten minutes searching the apartment for her cap before she remembered
—the last time she'd
seen it, it had been lying in the middle of the street.

The wind.
It had been the wind.

She opened the door slowly, her breathing sporadic,
her tongue working at her lips as she took the stairs in a virtual crawl. The banister was wood-cold. The foyer tracked with melting snow brown around the edges. On
the mail table by the door was a shoe box with a tented
sheet of typing paper resting on top. She glanced at it as she reached for the
doorknob,
saw her name scrawled
across it. A look to Goldsmith's door, to Kelly's, and she picked it up.

The note was short:
Found this on the walk before we
left. You must have lost it last night. Is it yours?

Abbey had signed it, and Pat smiled at the woman's
thoughtfulness, finding her cap and bringing it in. She
was, indeed, a rare creature, and despite all Kelly's
grousing, Pat hoped she would find the man she was
looking for before long. Whoever he was, he was never
going to know just how lucky he would be.

She lifted the lid and reached in, snatched her hand
back as her eyes focused on what lay inside.

It was a glove. Brown leather, and fringed at the cuff.

THE discovery was something akin to a physical
blow. Expecting to find her cap in the box, she found
instead Oliver's glove, usually seen poking out of one
of his hip pockets. She almost dropped it. Changed her
mind and stood by the door, looking at but not seeing
the frame-high glass panel so marked with facets you
couldn't look through it without your eyes watering.
Her arm dropped slowly and the glove dangled toward
the floor. Oliver, she thought; how long had he been
out there last night? And what had he seen?

She passed a hand over her forehead, made a fist and rubbed at her left eye. This was silly. It was obvious he
had been at Harriet's to whatever hour and had walked
by here, perhaps on the chance of seeing a light on in
her apartment. He might have wanted to apologize for
his less than generous moods lately. Or maybe he was
just nosy. Whichever it had been, the hedge had proba
bly snagged the glove from his pocket and he hadn't
noticed.

A slow, brief constriction in her chest made her hold
her breath. And who, she asked silently, is being less
than generous now?

The nightmare.
The wind.
She knew as she opened the door she was in no condition to face her classes
today, despite the triumphant news she'd received at the
meeting. She glanced over her shoulder at the stairs
,,
thinking she might be able to get back up in time to call
Harriet. A horn stopped her, and she was down the
steps and rapping on the passenger window of a much-
traveled sedan. Harriet leaned over and rolled it down.

"I'm not going," Pat said apologetically. "I'm sorry,
Harriet, but something's come up and I'll not be in today. You can spread the word if you want, and I'll
call the dean. If you have a chance, would you mind tacking a sign to my office door? I'll be in on Monday,
for sure."

Harriet's face pinched in concern. "Doc, you okay?"

"Nothing I can't handle, Harriet. And I'm sorry again for dragging you over here."

Harriet looked toward the street. A snow plow had
been by at least once, but the snowfall had been too great, the temperature still too low
—there was a thin
and browning sheath over the blacktop, already begin
ning to glisten where ice patches had formed. She looked back. "It's all right," she said, though her tone
was unable to mask the reproach.
"Maybe, if you feel
better later, you can call Mr. Curtis and see about . . .
you know."

"Yes. Maybe I'll do that."

She stepped away from the curb, kicking back through
the hillock of plowed snow until she was on the sidewalk. She watched as Harriet drove away, rear tires
spinning for a moment in apparent indication the girl
was angry and wanted desperately to speed. Then, with
a white-breathed sigh, she hurried back upstairs and
called Constable. Neither he nor Danvers was in his
office, but she left a message with both secretaries and
assured them vigorously she would return on Monday in
one piece. Once done, she stood by the kitchen's back
window and stared at the trees.

The pressure was supposed to be over. She was not
supposed to continue to have these fantasies of surveil
lance and menace. It bothered her to think she might
not be as strong and resilient as she'd thought, bothered
her more that she could not stand being in the apartment
one moment longer. Yet there was no escaping the
sensations that trailed after her as she headed quickly
toward the door: that the ceilings were beginning to
lower by incredibly slow inches, that the furniture was
more suited to a funeral parlor than a home, that there
were whisperings in the corners that could have been
the hot water streaming through the baseboard pipes,
could have been and weren't.

Her right arm dragged downward. She glowered at
her handbag and saw the glove and Homer, returned
muttering to the kitchen, where she dropped the former
on the table and set the latter on its shelf.

Out again, holding a palm to her throat while she
looked up and down the street, seeing for a disturbing
second the
darkwind
chasing her, seeing herself stum
bling, seeing her cap
cartwheeling
along the blacktop.
She glanced around without much expectation of find
ing it in the
snowbanks
, shrugged when she didn't and headed down to the next corner, turned left and walked
slowly until she found herself on Centre Street.

The Christmas decorations were gone, the curbs lined with cars, most of the shop windows under the mansard
roofs already beginning to display the next season's
wares. She considered walking over to Yarrow's to find
a book to read, thought seriously about stopping in at
Miller's Mysteries to see what curious items were all
the rage this month. Miller's, though it had changed hands sometime last year, was a search-and-locate busi
ness; if there was something odd, something offbeat
you wanted or needed, Miller's would find it, bring it
back and give you a fair price. Josh Miller, the original
owner, she had known only slightly, had remembered
him because he'd been one of the few people in town
who hadn't held it against her that she wasn't a native.
Now he was gone (though where, she didn't know) and
Larry Nesmith had taken his place. A bright, rotund
Santa Claus of a young man whose amateur magic was
more a drawing card to the shop than his uncanny ability to locate the unusual.

She had almost taken
a half
-dozen strides in that
direction when she stopped herself, almost causing a
collision with a woman coming up behind her. No.
Nesmith's cheer would be too much for her to take just
now, and she made an about-face and virtually marched
down to Chancellor Avenue. Stopped at the corner and
looked to the building on her right.

Something, she told herself wryly, is trying to tell me
something, I think.

The
Oxrun
police station was a pseudo-Grecian tem
ple of marble and granite, white globes on either side of
the solid oak doors, and pale green walls on the inside
that somehow seemed standard for every station across the country. A low wooden railing divided the waiting
area from the workspace, and just behind it was a large desk raised on a platform. Behind it, two frosted-glass doors for detectives and patrolmen, the detention cells
down a corridor to the right and the chief's office down
a corridor to the left. Behind the desk a grey-and-blue
uniformed policeman sat, working a crossword with a
fountain pen. When he looked up and saw Pat waiting he grinned, erupting deep dimples in his cheeks and
taking ten years from his age.

"Hey, hi!" he said, rising and coming around to step down from the platform. "Congratulations, too, Miss
Shavers. I hear you're taking over the college next year."

She grinned, and ducked her head in thanks. Wes
Martin would never know how good it had made her feel to hear something like that.

"What can I do for you?"

She hesitated, feeling abruptly and deeply foolish for
giving in to a whim.

"Oh," he said, nodding as though he had read her
thoughts. "Oh, you probably want to know if they found the car smasher.''

"Yes," she said softly, and had to repeat it when it
was evident he hadn't heard. "Dr. Danvers was awfully
upset, and so was I, for that matter. Fred seemed to think it was one of the students."

"Well, if it was," Wes said, "they didn't find them.
Or him.
Poor old Borg must've been there until dawn,
and all he got for it was a couple of snowballs down his
collar." He grinned again and brushed his fingers through
short-cropped sandy hair. "If you want to know what I
think . . ."

Her hands slipped into her overcoat pocket.
"Sure,
Wes."

"I don't think we're
gonna
find them. There were no fingerprints on that hammer-thing, only a zillion foot
prints in all the snow
...
I don't think so, nope. But I
tell you, I sure would like to meet the people that could
do a job like that. I got a potential mother-in-law I'd like to see made into a dwarf."

Her laugh was dutiful, whatever comment she might
have wanted to make forestalled when one of four
telephones on the desk rang and Wes excused himself
quickly. She didn't know why, but she waited, watch
ing him nodding, grunting once,
reaching
for a pencil to scribble something down on a pad. There was a long,
narrow scar behind his left ear, one that darted under
his collar and, she knew, didn't stop until it reached his decidedly
unflabby
waist. She had gone out with him
several times two summers ago, never once learned the
scar's story, and couldn't understand why a man with
an advanced degree from John Jay would bury himself
in a place like
Oxrun
.

Bury; and she chided herself for being unfair. It was
the wrong word, of course, unless it was applied to her. And before she knew it she felt the depression, and the
unease, slipping around her again.

"Sorry," Wes said then, swinging around the desk to take his seat. "That was King's. They need authorization
to release a wreck to the insurance company."

"Susan Haslet," she said without thinking.

Wes lifted an eyebrow, one much darker than his hair. "Yeah, how did you know?"

"A guess," she said. "She was a student."

He nodded. "A
crime,
ain't
it. You see some people
a hundred years old that should've been buried before they were twenty they're so miserable, then you get
someone like this who hasn't even had a
—" He stopped
suddenly, and looked away to the far wall. "Hey, Pat,
I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."

It took her a moment to realize he was referring to
Lauren, another startled moment to realize she didn't
feel guilty. "It's all right," she told him, softening his
embarrassment with a forgiving smile. "It was a long
time ago."

"Well, yeah, I suppose." He looked down at his pad. "
Y'know
, I'll never understand how King man
ages to stay in business. He's incredible. Can't keep
records worth his soul, changes mechanics quicker man
the weather, yet he has the gall to complain we didn't
investigate the accident right." He shook his head in
disbelief. "I mean, the car
—you heard it was just like
yours, I guess—it was right smack against a telephone
pole, whole right side smashed to hell and gone. So was
the left, the door sheared off its hinges. King claims it
couldn't have happened, forgetting, I think, a car does
tend to spin around when it's hit.
Dope.
I mean, he's a
real dope." He leaned forward on his elbows. "Last
year," he said, winking conspiratorially, "he gets a call
to pick up some MG that took the woods on over near
Harley. On the way back in the tow truck he ends up in
the ditch himself, claims to this very day he was at
tacked by giant gnats." His laugh filled the room, so
ceiling-high and wide it almost echoed. "King do enjoy
his Coors now and then, he really do."

Pat nodded, trying to join the banter and ignore the
weight easing onto her shoulders. But she could not.
After a few minutes more she waved and left quickly,
afraid he would notice something and try to ferret it without her permission. He was good at that, one reason why she'd stopped seeing him so regularly; she'd
found herself telling him things she hadn't wanted anyone to know, not even if the time were right and proper.

He called out a goodbye as the doors closed behind
her, and she almost turned to answer, saw the oak
swinging heavily into place and shrugged. Stood on the broad stoop and watched the traffic swing out of Centre
Street and onto the avenue. Most of the automobiles had snow tires on, but there were still a stubborn few
that refused to yield to the blandishments of advertising
and had chains on their tires, the rhythmic clanking
blurring into a single sound doing more to stir child
hood memories than any faded photograph.