The Messenger: A Novel (5 page)

J
ulio Alvarez saw the black Mini Cooper stop before the cemetery gates. It was just after midnight, a time when visiting hours were long over, although if you were the night watchman for a cemetery with its share of movie stars and other famous permanent residents, you never knew who might try to sneak in after dark. But Julio knew this visitor, and unlocked the gates and pulled them open. The driver of the car rolled down the window as he pulled through.

“How are you this evening, Julio?”

“Fine, Tyler. And you?”

“Fine. Thank you for admitting us.”

“Tyler, I owe you so much for—”

“No, no you don’t. Not a thing. I’ll just park over there, all right?”

Julio gave it up. The man would never accept his thanks. “Sure, Tyler, wherever you like.”

Shade didn’t wait for Tyler to open the passenger door—he bounded out of the driver’s side as soon as Tyler was out of the car. Once out, though, he was perfectly calm and well behaved.

“Hello, Shade,” Julio said, giving him soft scratches around his ruff. “I know you want to get to work, so go on.”

Tyler thanked him again and walked off with the dog.

Julio watched them for a few minutes before locking the gate again.
Most of the time, the last thing you wanted running around in a cemetery after dark—okay, second to last to a high school kid on a dare—was a dog off leash. They pooped. They peed. They dug. They rolled around in the mud on top of the new graves.

This dog never did any of that. He patrolled the place as if he had some kind of duty. Tyler had explained that he was a cemetery dog, and Julio supposed there must be darned few of them, because he had never heard of the like. Not that he mentioned these midnight visits to anyone. Would have cost him his job.

This dog wasn’t like any other dog Julio had ever met. Shade had an ability to find graves that needed a little work or had been damaged. It was as if he took that as a personal affront. Well, so did Julio.

Tyler carried a flashlight, but there was nearly a full moon tonight, so he didn’t use it. He walked patiently beside Shade, who was never so happy as when he was working. Tyler didn’t understand all that went on with the dog, despite their long companionship, but he was aware that Shade sensed things in a cemetery that Tyler could not.

The dead were lost to Tyler, but he did not think this was true for Shade. At times, Shade would stop in a cemetery and stand very still, as if he saw something or someone Tyler could not see. Usually, whatever it was would hold the dog’s interest for a time, then he would move on.

On rare occasions, he would growl. Though few things frightened Tyler these days, a growl from Shade always sent a chill down his spine.

Shade seemed to dominate whatever it was, though, for after these encounters he would step a little higher on his toes, as if exhibiting a kind of dog pride in a job well done.

Tyler found himself thinking of Colby again, of his odd visit. He wondered if he had failed to hear the real message, if Colby was growing lonely and could bring that up only by accusing Tyler of it. There were serious differences between them, ones that made Tyler unwilling to spend a lot of time with him. In truth, Shade was a better friend.

They were strolling through a particularly old part of the cemetery—always Shade’s favorite place to be in any graveyard—when Tyler’s cell phone rang. The dog looked back at him in annoyance.

“I agree,” Tyler said, “but then, if someone is calling me now, I should take it, don’t you think?”

Shade sighed and kept moving.

Tyler answered the call.

“Mr. Hawthorne? This is Samuel Gunning. I—uh, I don’t know if you remember me.”

“Of course I do, Mr. Gunning.”

His business in St. Louis had been to help a dying man named Max Derley, who wanted desperately to convey news to Mr. Gunning—the boy being raised as Max’s son was in fact wealthy Samuel Gunning’s son. Gunning had been shocked, and then pleased. When Tyler left the city, Gunning was talking to the boy’s mother—an old flame—about caring for the two of them.

“I’m sorry to bother you so late, Mr. Hawthorne, but here in Max’s notes, it says it’s best to call you at this time of night.”

“Please call me Tyler. Max was correct about the time to call. How are you this evening?”

“Yes, well, you call me Sam—and I’m fine. I can’t thank you enough for that, although I’m still not sure how—”

“I can’t really explain it myself. What can I do for you now, Sam?”

“Well, Tyler, I just wanted to let you know that someone at the hospital where Max died has gossiped a bit, and as will happen with gossip, didn’t get the story quite right. To make a long story short, I’ve got some relatives out there in California who never had a snowflake’s chance in hell of inheriting my money, but they’ve taken it into their crazy heads that you cooked up some plot with Max to trick me into changing my will.”

“You’ll pardon me for asking this, but are you so certain they’re wrong?”

“I have never been more certain of anything. He’s my boy.”

“You’ve had DNA tests done?”

“Don’t need them. One look at him is enough. Besides, I know what I know.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Tyler, I’ve had to hire bodyguards to look after all of us here, at least until I can convince the law to do something about these folks, but I’m afraid they may also be after you. I wanted you to be on guard. I promise I’ll attend to it just as soon as I can.”

“I’m not afraid for my own sake, Sam, but I do have a friend living with me at the moment, and I would like to ensure his safety.”

“Can I offer you help from my security service?”

“I have one of my own, thanks. I do need to know more about these relatives, though. Give me whatever information you think will be helpful.”

“You have e-mail?”

Tyler gave him his e-mail address.

“Great. I’ll send something to you right away. You have any questions, just give me a call.”

Tyler thanked him and hung up.

Shade was watching him.

“You heard?”

The dog wagged his tail.

“Do you stay with Ron or come with me to the desert?”

Shade made a tight circle around him.

“All right, then I’d better call Danton’s Security. In fact, until Danton’s is able to show up, I probably shouldn’t leave Ron and his medical team alone at the house—”

But Shade had anticipated his concern, and was headed toward the car at a brisk trot.

L
ate Friday night, Amanda drove down a dark desert road, asking herself why in the hell she had thought she’d ever enjoy herself for a minute at this or any other of her cousins’ parties.

Well, she thought, I take that back. She had enjoyed herself for a few minutes. A really good-looking guy named Colby had spent time talking to her. It hadn’t taken long for one of Rebecca’s friends to butt in on the conversation, though. Colby had given Amanda a rueful look and excused himself to go have a cigarette. She saw him talking to Brad on his way out, doubtless making an excuse for leaving early. And even if he had the good sense to exit Rebecca’s party before she did, besides being a smoker, she could tell he was a player, so she didn’t take his momentary interest in her to mean a thing.

After that, things went downhill. She had forgotten how boring it was to be nearly the only sober person at a party full of heavy drinkers and pot smokers. She had tried not to think of the last time she had been at such a party—the holiday evening that had left her an orphan with a roomful of ghosts. She did her best to cope with Rebecca’s party until the more exotic drugs came out. She knew they were probably commonplace at Rebecca’s wild weekends, but she didn’t think she could enjoy herself if everyone else around her was loaded. She decided to leave. Rebecca saw her leaving and intercepted her at the door.

“Thanks for inviting me, Rebecca, but—well, I think I’d better be going.”

“You are the most boring thing, Amanda. But I don’t think I can take another five minutes of looking at that outfit anyway. Where did you find anything with pockets that big? The length of the top is all wrong for you—it makes your butt look like the back end of a battleship—”

“Gee, why on earth wouldn’t I want to stick around to hear more of this?” Amanda said, noticing that Rebecca had an audience now—an amused audience. “Good night, Rebecca.”

Brad hurried up to them. “Wait! Wait! Amanda, you can’t leave yet!”

“Watch me.”

“No, stay a little while longer.”

“Why?” she asked suspiciously.

It appeared to her that Brad didn’t really have an answer, but then he smiled and said, “There’s someone here who has been asking about you!” He took her elbow and steered her away from the door.

Did he mean Colby?
she wondered. Maybe he hadn’t left.

She allowed Brad to lead her toward a group standing near the bar. Suddenly she heard Rebecca squeal, “Tyler!”

She turned to see Tyler Hawthorne doing his best to resist Rebecca’s attempt to cling to him.

Not that she could blame her cousin. He was dressed in jeans, a white long-sleeved shirt, and a leather jacket. Casual, but he made it look as elegant as a tux. He was glancing around the room, saw Amanda, and smiled.

She smiled back, raised her hand in a little wave, felt like an idiot, and turned away.

To come face-to-face with a nightmare.

She hadn’t seen Todd Norenbecker in eight years. Not since the night that her parents, and Brad and Rebecca’s parents, had died in a car accident. It also happened to be the night of a neighborhood Christmas party. And the night she lost her virginity to Todd.

They had been dating for a teenage eternity—three months. Todd had spent most of that time begging her to give it up to him. He had sworn
undying devotion to her in the same breath with which he had said he would have to find a more “mature” girlfriend if she wouldn’t have sex with him. Being incurably honest with herself, later she had owned up to the fact that she had never loved Todd any more than he had loved her. Curiosity and hormones—and for her, a long-since-abandoned, but then oh-so-strong desire to fit in—had driven her to experiment that night. An experiment that had never inspired her to try it again.

The accident that killed her parents severely injured Amanda, and she had spent several weeks in the hospital. Todd never visited her, never called, didn’t do so much as send her a text message saying, “Sorry about your parents.” Ron, who had always disliked Todd, had been by her side as often as possible.

“You remember Todd!” Brad was saying.

Todd smiled smugly.

“No,” she said, “I don’t think there’s any reason I should.”

Brad looked startled and uneasy, and she realized in that moment that Brad probably didn’t know much of how her history with Todd had ended—Brad’s parents had also died in that accident, and understandably, any thought of Amanda’s love life and breakups at that time wouldn’t have registered on anyone else’s radar.

She started to turn away, but Todd grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her toward him.

“Hey!” Brad protested.

Todd ignored him. She could smell the booze on Todd’s breath, and tried to squirm away from him. Painfully tightening his grip on her shoulder, he said in a loud voice, “Don’t know me, Amanda? What a liar. I was your first and you know it! You begged me for it—”

“Take your hands off her,” a commanding voice interrupted. “Apologize, and then shut the hell up.”

Tyler Hawthorne. Could her humiliation be any more complete?

“Mind your own fucking business, asshole!” Todd said. He let go of her, then took a swing at Tyler.

It missed.

“Oh, thank you for that,” Tyler said. His fist flew into Todd’s face.

Women screamed as Todd toppled backward into the bar, then hit the floor.

“Apologize to her,” Tyler said.

“It’s not necessary,” Amanda muttered, mortified. She ducked her head and stumbled away through the crowd surrounding them.

She heard Todd say, “Apologize to that—”

But before he could finish his sentence, there was the sound of blows, the crash of furniture, and more shouts and screams.

She hurried out the door and all but ran to her car.

Driving through the desert night helped to calm her. A motorcycle had passed her old Honda several miles ago, pulling far ahead of her on the narrow road, then settling at a steady speed that kept her car about half a mile behind it. Whoever it was had to have come from the party—although she had since passed some small side roads, there weren’t any between the mansion and the point where she had first noticed the motorcycle.

Since everyone at the party had been three sheets to the wind, she was happy to let the biker pass her. Having her car rear-ended by a drunk on a bike in the middle of the desert would, she thought, be enough to send her right over the edge. When he pulled ahead, it seemed to her he was holding steadily to a straight line. Great. She had missed meeting the one other sober person there.

The motorcycle slowed a bit, and the gap between them narrowed. She was no sooner aware of this than she realized they were approaching an intersection of some kind. She saw something moving in the darkness off to the right. A truck. With its lights off.

The truck was moving, raising a plume of dust as it sped along the intersecting dirt road.

The motorcycle’s brake light flared—too late.

She screamed a futile warning as she stomped on her brake pedal. The screech of tires skidding on pavement added to her wail.

She heard the bang of impact just ahead.

She caught the briefest glimpse of the rider, parted from the motorcycle like a horseman thrown from a metallic bronco, before all her attention was focused on dodging the sparking pinwheel of the bike on the asphalt of this narrow road, its gleaming mass spinning toward her car.

It struck the front end of the Honda with a second bang, coming up over the hood and shattering her windshield. Her airbag went off as the car fishtailed, then spun off the road, coming to a lopsided halt in a shallow ditch and soft sand.

Shaken by the accident, Amanda sat dazed in her car. The airbag had stung, and had given her a small nosebleed. She found a tissue and held it to her face, watching as two hulking figures dressed in white-hooded coveralls and heavy work boots emerged from the pickup truck, hurried to the still figure on the ground, and pulled the motorcycle helmet from his head.

She thought they were about to offer their victim aid, and was wondering if it had been wise of them to move him even so much, when, to her horror, they began to viciously kick his ribs, his back, his head. It was only then she saw that, in addition to the hoods, their faces were masked. She unfastened her seat belt and unlocked her car doors—then hesitated. She was no match for the brawny attackers. She locked the doors again. Lot of good it would do with the windshield smashed out, she thought.

She cowered behind the steering wheel.

They turned to stare toward her car.

She quickly dropped her head down onto the wheel, closed her eyes, and slumped, trying to assume the posture of someone who was passed out cold. She heard the approach of their footsteps and felt a sickening certainty that they would see she no longer wore her seat belt, that they had heard the door locks, that they would see the tension she could feel in every muscle of her body.
I’m unconscious. I don’t hear anything. I am as lifeless as that man on the road.

They were very near now. She kept her eyes closed. One of them rapped on the window next to her. She did not respond, nor did she
open her eyes when one of them reached in through the broken windshield and touched her shoulder, undoubtedly intending to shake her—until he cut himself on a piece of broken glass.

“Son of a bitch!”

The hand withdrew. She heard the other one try the passenger-side door.

“You hear something?” the one who had cut himself said.

They stood still, listening.

“Shit,” the other one said softly. She strained her own ears but heard no approaching vehicles or other signs of rescue.

“See anything?”

“See anything!” the other mocked. “By then it will be too late.”

“Shhh! Listen!”

After what seemed to her to be several hours, but was really only a few seconds, she heard them move away, a few steps at a walk, then at a run.

She kept her head down. They had not spoken more than those few words, so she did not know their plans. Would they return from the truck with a crowbar or a tire jack or something else to use to ensure her silence? A gun? She hadn’t seen their faces. She whimpered a prayer that they had not seen hers. She heard the doors of the pickup truck slamming shut. She heard the truck drive off, but some time passed before she could make herself sit up and peer over the dash again.

They were gone.

Hands trembling, she pulled her cell phone from her purse.

No signal.

She took a flashlight and a small first-aid kit from the glove compartment and stepped out of the car, feeling wobbly but mentally pushing herself to set her own troubles aside.

The force of the impact had thrown the man a short distance down the dirt road. She played the flashlight over the ground between the intersection and where the man lay, and was surprised to see a third path, a trail of some kind, which led away from the intersection. Could there be help within reach? A small house? The flashlight didn’t illuminate
much, though, and within the range of its beam she could see only a low, broken-down picket fence that bore all the signs of long abandonment. She began to run down the dirt road toward the man, glad she had decided in favor of comfortable sandals rather than high heels tonight, but wishing she was dressed in her usual jeans and T-shirt rather than the dressier pants and top she’d worn to the party. Nothing to be done about that now.

“Are you all right?” she shouted.

A stupid question, she thought angrily as she reached his unmoving form. She was half afraid of what she might see, that the damage done to him might be horrific. But although he did not stir or respond in any way, at first sight he seemed to have simply fallen asleep on the road. In a rather red-stained condition.

She knelt beside him and aimed the beam of the flashlight on his bloodied face. She received a shock. Tyler Hawthorne. Although she had known the person on the bike would be someone who had been at the large party, most of the attendees were strangers to her. She hadn’t expected to recognize the rider.

“Mr. Hawthorne? Tyler?”

No response.

Beneath the already drying blood, his face was gray. She touched his cheek. It was cold. She drew her hand back quickly, then told herself not to be a fool. She moved her hand to his neck. No pulse.

She fought an urge to be sick.

Pull yourself together. He could still be alive. Help him!

She silently begged him to live.

She opened his soft leather jacket, unbuttoned the shirt beneath it, felt again for his heartbeat. There was none. She pressed her ear against his chest, heard nothing, and shouted his name again. No whisper of breath left him. She quickly looked for any sign of bleeding, found none. Not necessarily good, she knew—dead men didn’t bleed. She tilted his head back and began CPR.

With each exhalation of her warm breath into his mouth, with every compression of his chest, she silently exhorted him to live.

No answering breath or heartbeat returned.

He’s dead. He’s dead.

But if you’re wrong?

She did not stop. She began to lose all sense of time and her surroundings, the world distilled down to pressing her hands together just so, just here, counting to thirty, softly pinching his nose, covering his mouth, exhaling, watching his chest rise with the air she sent to his lungs. She was growing weary, and she felt tears of frustration and helplessness spilling down her cheeks, salting her lips and Tyler’s cold face. She ordered herself to stop crying, telling herself she would not be able to breathe if her nose was stopped up with tears.

She kept working, ignoring how tired her arms felt now.

She was exhaling when she felt something very cold touch her neck. She froze. She could hear panting.

She turned slowly, and screamed.