Storming Heaven (11 page)

The glassy-eyed cops grinned in unison.

“So I go up to it. No mistaking it, the guy’s dead. I open the door and he kind of flops down face first on the back seat. Anyway, I grab him by the hair—he’s got this really long hair—to pull the body out.” Beamon paused dramatically. “Pulled his head clean off. Shotgun blast had caught him right in the neck.”

The cops were silent for a moment and then burst out laughing. Sheriff Parkinson pounded drunkenly on the table with a closed fist.

“True story,” Beamon said, leaning back and polishing off his beer. “Puked all over my shoes. Had to write a full report to get the Bureau to buy me a new—”

The sound of his beeper going off stopped Beamon
in mid-sentence. “Whoops, that’s us, John. I think our fax is coming through.”

Parkinson pointed to the empty beers in front of Beamon. “One more quick one for the road?”

“Thanks, but no,” Beamon said. “We’ve got to move.”

“You boys still coming by the house for dinner?”

Michaels grimaced. He’d hoped Parkinson’s invitation had been hypothetical.

“Hell yeah,” Beamon said. “It isn’t often I get a home-cooked meal. Six o’clock, right?”

“What is this?” Chet Michaels said, spreading the slick fax paper out on the bedspread in the hotel room he and Beamon had been sharing for the last two nights.

Beamon double-checked that his gun was loaded and began digging through his suitcase for a heavier sweater. “Think about it, Chet. Try to understand the psyche of your average backwoods paranoid.”

Michaels looked down again at what seemed to be a bad fax of a photograph that hadn’t turned out. He flipped it upside down. Still nothing. “I think it must have gotten screwed up in the fax, Mark. It’s just dark with a few light splotches.”

Beamon ignored him. “As I was saying, the psyche of the backwoods paranoid. When the Red hordes—or more likely the ATF—come over the hilts and surround ‘em, their trailer sure as hell isn’t going to save them. What do they do?”

“Head for the hills?”

“Hell, no. That’d be un-American. They go for their bomb shelters.”

Beamon slid an arm though the sleeve of the sweater he’d turned up and pointed to the photograph. “I got turned on to these things years ago when I was looking for another girl, a little younger than Jennifer. What you’re looking at is an aerial photo of Passal’s spread taken with heat-sensitive cameras. Tell me what you see.”

Michaels studied the fax for a few more moments, then pointed to a roughly rectangular off-white splotch centered on it. “That must be the trailer. You can see the stove here in the middle.”

“That’d be my take on it.”

“This little thing here must be that shack where the generator was running.”

“Uh-huh.”

Michael’s finger traced along the edge of the photo, stopping on another anomaly in the dark gray background of the photograph. “What’s that?”

“That’s where the ground isn’t being heated by the sun. It would seem to indicate that there’s something under there that’s not under the rest of the area.”

Michaels brought the fax up close to his face. “What do you think it is?” he said excitedly.

“I’m hoping for Jennifer Davis, but I doubt I’m that lucky.”

J
ENNIFER STIRRED, BUT DIDN’T OPEN HER
eyes. She rolled to her back, kicked the sheets off, and breathed deeply. Bright light filtered through her eyelids, and for a moment she imagined that they had become transparent. Through them she could see the pine celling of her home and the enormous wrought-iron chandelier that hung above her bed.

This was it. It had to be. Today she would finally wake up from the nightmare. Today she’d be home. Jennifer took a final deep breath and opened her eyes.

The glare off the stark white ceiling blinded her, just as it had the last five times she had played out this elaborate ritual. She threw her forearm over her eyes, rolled on her side, and began to cry quietly.

Why was this happening? Had she done something wrong? Maybe she was sick—and this was a hospital. The horrible dreams were just part of the illness. High fever could cause those things—she’d seen it on TV. And that’s why she was alone. She was contagious. Quarantined.

She would think about that for a time, as she did every “morning” in the windowless room. When she had once again convinced herself of the plausibility of this explanation, she would rise and walk slowly to the doorless bathroom at the other
side of the room, splash water on her face, and stare at the empty wall above the sink.

Finally, she would look down at herself. At the short white T-shirt and cotton panties that were the only clothes provided for her. At the unnaturally pale hue her skin had taken on.

She would let her fingers trace the outlines of the fading green-brown bruises that had adorned her body in various configurations since she had taken up mountain biking. Then she would return to the twin bed and sit with her back against the wall and stare at the empty room, eventually sinking to the mattress and into something that felt more like a trance than sleep. When she awoke, there would be a plate of food, a towel, and a clean T-shirt and pair of underpants by the door.

She had no idea how long she’d been alone in this room. The difference between day and night was just a flick of a light switch and there had been no sounds emanating from behind the heavy wooden door that led to … where?

Sometimes the feeling that she was caught in a cube in the middle of an empty desert plain overwhelmed her. She would become panicked that one day the person silently depositing her meals would lose interest and she would die alone and hungry, never knowing what had happened to her and to her family. Or worse, that the meals would continue to silently appear forever, leaving her to drown in loneliness and confusion.

At first the quiet clink of metal against metal didn’t sound real. Just another trick played by her mind. When it came again, though, she struggled
back to a sitting position. The heavy knob on the door jiggled almost imperceptibly.

It was real.

She pressed her back against the wall and drew her knees to her chest, feeling the numbness and despair that had become oddly comforting in their familiarity wash away in a flood of adrenaline.

Could it be her father? Of course, it must be. He’d finally come for her. It had all been a fever-induced dream. And now she was better.

The door opened slowly as Jennifer slid to the edge of the bed and began to stand, wanting nothing more than to be folded in her dad’s arms and to be told that she was okay now and going home.

“Jennifer.”

She fell back onto the bed, legs pedaling desperately in the tangle of sheets until her back slammed against the wall. It was her. The woman who had made her father go crazy. The woman who had been sitting at the edge of her bed staring into the dark while she slept.

Jennifer kicked at the air weakly in an effort to keep the woman away, to no effect. She easily caught one of Jennifer’s ankles and threw her legs to the side.

“Be still,” the woman said, grabbing the back of her hair. Out of the corner of her eye, Jennifer saw a man with a thick black mustache pull the door closed, leaving them alone.

Jennifer could feel the woman’s eyes boring into her and tried to turn away, but the woman’s grip on her hair kept her head immobile. “No, you look at me, Jennifer. Look at me.”

Jennifer wanted to push her away, but she felt
weak, confused. Like she was floating in a current that was impossible to fight.

“Do you know what’s happened?” the woman said.

Jennifer opened her mouth, but she hadn’t spoken in so long and she was so afraid, her throat felt paralyzed.

“Do you know what’s happened?”

“I don’t know,” Jennifer got out.

“Yes you do. Tell me.”

The images of her parents’ death that seemed to have finally begun to fade suddenly returned to her with devastating clarity. “My parents,” she stammered. “They’re … gone.”

“That’s right, Jennifer. They’re dead. And you know how, don’t you. Tell me how.”

Jennifer threw her arms over her face and felt the tears begin to flow down her temples. “No,” she sobbed. “No, don’t make me.”

The woman pulled Jennifer’s arms away from her face and tightened her grip on her hair.

“How did it happen, Jennifer?”

“He killed her … then he killed himself. What did you do to them? What did you do to my parents?”

She felt the woman slide her hand under her T-shirt and gently caress the skin on her stomach from her navel to just beneath her breasts. Jennifer tried to move away, but the powerful hand tangled in her hair held her fast. “They weren’t your parents, dear. You know that. Don’t you?”

“They were,” Jennifer heard herself say. “They loved me just as much as if I was their real daughter.”

“That’s what you were supposed to think, Jennifer,”
the woman said, shaking her head with something that looked like sadness. “It’s what I told them to make you believe.”

“You’re lying!”

The edges of the woman’s mouth curled up almost imperceptibly. “Then why didn’t your father use the gun I gave him to save you?”

Jennifer closed her eyes so tight she could see dull streaks of imaginary light streaking across the insides of her eyelids. “He would have … he wanted …” Her voice trailed off. Why hadn’t he? Why hadn’t he saved her?”

“He didn’t save you because you weren’t really his child. I gave you to them and told them to take care of you until it was time for you to come back to me. That’s all.”

The woman’s hand slid from underneath her shirt and into her hand. Jennifer heard her stand and felt a gentle pull. She allowed herself to be led into the bathroom.

“I’m the only one who loves you now, Jennifer. I’m the one who takes care of you,” the woman said, reaching into the small shower and turning on the water. She tested the temperature and then turned back to Jennifer, who was standing immobile on the cold tile floor. Jennifer didn’t resist as the woman pulled her T-shirt over her head and then dropped to her knees and slid her panties down her legs.

She stepped silently into the hot shower, trying to fight off the distorted image of her parents’ shattered bodies swirling around her in the thick steam. She closed her eyes again as she felt the woman begin to run a soapy washcloth along her wet skin,
trying to let her mind retreat into the past. She surrounded herself with the memory of her last race, her friend spraying the mud off her with a hose, the look on her parents’ faces as she toweled her hair with the old grease rag.

“I want to go home,” she said so quietly that the sound was almost completely swallowed up by the running water.

The woman dropped the washrag into the bottom of the shower and ran a soapy hand slowly down Jennifer’s back. “You are home, dear.”

T
HE STOVE WAS PRETTY MUCH COLD.

Beamon stuck his hands into the open grate and tried to warm them on the few remaining coals glowing dimly through a blanket of ash. The cans lining the walls around him had gone pale white with a thin layer of frost. The door had been wide open when they’d arrived.

Beamon dropped to his knees and looked under the bed. The shotgun and hatchet he’d put under it were gone.

“You got anything, Chet?” Beamon yelled, walking down the steps and back into the blinding light of a heatless sun.

Michaels threw open the door to the generator house, gun stretched out in front of him. He poked his head into it, lowered his gun, and turned back toward Beamon. “Nothing.”

“Now, where the hell did he get off to?” Beamon said.

Michaels walked slowly toward him, scanning the clearing. “Do you think he just headed into the hills? His truck’s still here.”

Beamon shook his head. It had been a bad call. He should have been watching. “I don’t know. Let’s see that fax again.”

Despite the clarity of the heat signature on the photograph, it was difficult to judge distances with any real precision. Beamon made his best guess as to the location of the possible underground chamber and he and Michaels began kicking through debris-scattered underbrush in a less than scientific pattern to find the entrance.

“Are you sure that blob on the picture is something underground?” Michaels said, dropping to his knees and peering under an unusually thick stand of thistles.

“I’m starting to wonder.” Beamon kicked a rotted piece of plywood. It flew into the air and was sent careening across the clearing by a strong gust of wind. “It feels right.”

Beamon tried to jam his toe under an old sign lying flat on the ground in front of him, but it wouldn’t budge. Thinking that it was perhaps stuck in the ground frost, he crouched down and felt around the edges. Along the back, the rough surface of peeling paint was broken intermittently by the oily metal of hinges.

“Chet. Over here.”

Michaels jogged up and looked down at the old sign. “You think this is it?”

Beamon nodded.

“You think he might be in there?”

“Don’t know. His truck’s still here, and it looks like most of his stuff’s still in the trailer. But then, why let the stove die down and leave the door open?”