The Third Hill North of Town (15 page)

He forced himself to take a deep breath, and then another. If he stayed here and turned himself in, Julianna would be taken into custody, as well, and no doubt she would soon be returned to the mental ward she had apparently escaped from. And while that might be the best place for her, there was something about the trust on her face that made him feel bad, in spite of himself, at the idea of being responsible for her recapture. There was also Steve to think about; if the other boy got caught with them, he would likely share in their punishment even though he had done nothing wrong. Turning himself and Julianna in was one thing, but getting Steve arrested, too, surely wasn’t the right thing to do, was it? Elijah could tell the police the older boy was innocent, of course, but he doubted the cops would believe anything that came out of his mouth—especially not since they already thought he and Steve had run over one of their own on the highway.

“Jesus,” he murmured again. “This is so insane.”

Julianna was still watching him, still waiting for him. It occurred to Elijah that he’d never had anybody besides his parents look at him the way she was looking at him; whoever she thought he was, the softness of her gaze held real love in it, genuine and unmistakable.

What am I supposed to do, God?
he demanded.
Tell me what to do!

No answer from on high was forthcoming, however, and Julianna was beginning to fidget.

Elijah swallowed hard, pulling himself together as best he could. “I know where the medicine cabinet is,” he rasped. “I’ll try to find the stuff for Steve’s leg.”

Julianna rewarded him with a dazzling smile.

“Very good.” She released his shoulder with a final squeeze and gazed back at the kitchen doorway, thinking fast. “Okay. After you’ve done that, run and tell Steve to hurry with the gasoline. I’ll join the two of you by the car in a moment, but I have a couple of things to take care of in here first.”

The sudden command in her voice was startling, but in spite of himself Elijah felt a surge of relief. The Julianna who had run over the state trooper was apparently back, and Elijah couldn’t help but be grateful. Insane or not, this version of Julianna had proven herself able to deal with emergencies, and they very much needed her right now.

“Hurry, Ben,” she urged. “We don’t have much time.”

She strode past him on her way to the kitchen, but before she stepped out of sight she turned to face him. Her expression was stern.

“Once you’re outside, stay there,” she ordered. “Don’t come back in the house. Understand?”

Elijah opened his mouth to ask why, but she vanished around the corner before he could say anything. He stared down one final time at the dead woman on the floor, and his heart twisted. There was an ugly, fist-sized bruise on her left temple, and her pale lips were frozen in a frown. He closed his eyes and prayed for her soul—and his own, too, in pity and sorrow.

Julianna’s voice floated down the hall from the kitchen, jarring him back into motion.

“And don’t forget to zip up your pants, dear,” she called.

Chapter 6

G
abriel Dapper sat behind the wheel of his bright red Cadillac and watched Edgar Reilly trundle down the steps of the state mental hospital in Bangor, Maine. Edgar had drooping jowls and a bulging torso; his eyes were sad and brown, and much too small for his bald, wrinkled head.

“He looks like a walrus,” Gabriel muttered to himself.

It was half past seven on Saturday evening, but the temperature was still unpleasantly warm, so Gabriel had the windows rolled up and the air conditioner at its highest setting. Even with the arctic blast coming from the vents, however, he was sweating profusely; he felt as if he had a fever.

Edgar opened the passenger door of the Cadillac. “Hello, Gabriel.”

Gabriel nodded, unconsciously tapping his steering wheel seven times with his left forefinger before answering. “Hi, Doc. Hop on in.”

As Edgar settled into the passenger seat of the Cadillac and pulled the door shut, he sighed with relief at the cooler temperature in the car. He simply couldn’t abide being hot, and he’d feared that Gabriel might be a “fresh air” type of man.

He gave Julianna’s son a strained smile. “Thanks again for letting me tag along with you tonight.”

Gabriel shrugged, wrinkling his nose at the smell of cigarettes on Edgar’s breath and clothes. “Sure.”

I hope he’s not a yakker,
Gabriel thought, putting the Cadillac in gear and turning west out of the parking lot. Gabriel was consumed with worry about his mother and had no patience for small talk.

I certainly hope he doesn’t expect me to make conversation all the way there,
Edgar Reilly thought. Edgar had a lot to mull over before they reached their destination, and he didn’t feel up to explaining his complicated mental processes to a layman. He reached into his pocket and dug out a bag of M&M’s, staring resolutely out the window to forestall a dialogue.

Earlier that evening Edgar had received a phone call from the Bangor Police Department informing him Julianna had been spotted by a state trooper in New Hampshire. This same trooper was now in the intensive care unit of a county hospital and had not regained consciousness since being run over by Edgar’s stolen Edsel. To make matters worse, the trooper’s last words to the dispatcher had been a shouted warning about a second kidnapper in the vehicle with Julianna.

Nor had this been the last of the grim tidings:

Edgar’s Edsel had been found abandoned on the highway in front of a dairy two miles from the border between New Hampshire and Vermont. There had been no sign of Julianna and her two captors, but there was a bullet hole in the rear window, blood on the steering wheel and on the backseat, and the dairy farmhouse itself had been burned to the ground—with the wife of the dairy farmer presumed to be still inside. The only other news Edgar had been given was that the first kidnapper was believed to be a teenaged Negro named Elijah Hunter, who had gone missing that morning from Prescott, Maine. Nothing was known about the Hunter boy’s companion.

Edgar had promptly dialed Gabriel Dapper to tell him what he’d learned, and Gabriel—who had spent the day at Julianna’s silent, book-stuffed house in Bangor, working himself into a frenzy of restlessness and rage over his mother’s abduction—had decided on the spot that he’d be damned if he’d sit around waiting for more such news. He’d stated his intention to leave Bangor that night to find Julianna on his own, and Edgar—who for his part had spent the day berating both himself and his staff for allowing Julianna’s escape—offered his assistance. Gabriel had accepted, and they had agreed to begin their search that night at the dairy farm in New Hampshire.

“Mind if I smoke?” Edgar now asked, reaching for the pack of cigarettes in his pocket.

Gabriel loathed the smell of cigarettes. “Sorry, I’m allergic,” he lied.

Edgar looked crestfallen. “That’s fine,” he muttered, doing his best to be a good sport. “I smoke too much, anyway.”

They lapsed into silence once more. Gabriel kept his eye on the mile markers along the highway, and every seven miles he tapped the steering wheel seven times. Edgar watched this ritual occur again and again and finally caught the pattern. He stirred in his seat and cleared his throat.

“You’ve got
Zwangsneurose,
” he said to Gabriel.

Gabriel turned to stare at him. “I’ve got what?”

“Zwangsneurose,”
Edgar repeated. “It means ‘compulsion neurosis.’ It’s a nervous disorder that often manifests itself in a behavioral tic such as yours.”

Edgar tapped the dash of the Cadillac seven times to demonstrate what he meant.

Gabriel flushed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’ve been tapping your steering wheel seven times, every seven miles,” Edgar explained kindly. “Many people who suffer from a compulsion neurosis fixate on a specific number, just like you’re doing. For example, I once had a patient who washed and dried his hands exactly five times whenever he went to the bathroom.”

Gabriel narrowed his eyes. “I’m just keeping track of the miles, Doc. I’m not crazy.”

“Of course not,” Edgar agreed. “A compulsion neurosis is nothing to be overly worried about. But you might want to consider undergoing psychoanalysis sometime to deal with the underlying motive for why you feel compelled to keep track of the miles in such a tactile, systematic manner. It’s a highly interesting quirk, to say the least.”

“It’s not a quirk,” Gabriel protested. “It’s just something I do to keep awake when I drive.”

“I see,” Edgar murmured. “Well, then, I’m glad it serves a good purpose.”

Gabriel scowled and returned his attention to the road, deciding to let the matter drop. He rebelliously tapped the wheel seven times again at the appropriate mile marker, however, refusing to interrupt his routine just because Edgar thought there was something wrong with it.

Edgar smiled indulgently and began sorting through a colorful handful of M&M’s, popping them in his mouth one by one (starting with brown, as always, then proceeding in alphabetic order through the other colors). As the chocolate melted on his tongue he stared out the window and let his mind wander.

Unbeknownst to Gabriel, Edgar had spoken on the phone less than an hour before to a profane man named Otto Kiley, who was the sheriff of Elijah Hunter’s hometown of Prescott, Maine. Sheriff Kiley had told Edgar that the report about Julianna’s kidnapping sounded like “a steaming pile of horseshit” to him; he insisted Elijah Hunter was a “fine young Negro” who would never dream of committing such a crime, let alone the other barbarities he was accused of, and that something “pretty fucking peculiar” had to be going on. Edgar had listened to Kiley’s protestations about what he viewed as a rush to judgment of Elijah Hunter, but Edgar’s immediate reaction had been to assume that the man probably had close ties to the Hunter family, and was therefore an unreliable source of information. This being the case he had decided not to share Kiley’s doubts with Julianna’s son, feeling that the last thing Gabriel needed to hear at the moment was idle speculation about the innocence of his mother’s kidnapper.

But what if it turned out Kiley was right after all?

The more Edgar thought about it, the more unsettled he became. All anybody had been thinking about was Julianna’s welfare, but what if things were not exactly what they seemed? Edgar and his staff were already vulnerable to a lawsuit for allowing Julianna to escape, but what if they were
also
responsible for far worse than that? What if, for instance, Julianna had picked up the Hunter boy when he was hitchhiking or something, and he was actually
her
prisoner, instead of the other way around?

Edgar squirmed in his seat, considering the legal implications.

He didn’t see how Julianna could have overpowered the teenager without a gun, and surely she hadn’t managed to procure a weapon before she came across Hunter. Even if she had, though, it still wouldn’t explain the second kidnapper in the car. She surely couldn’t have kidnapped this person, as well, could she?

But she COULD have set the fire at the dairy farm,
he reminded himself.

Julianna had a predisposition for arson; it was why she had been committed to Edgar’s care in the first place. And if the police were right about the woman who lived on the dairy farm being killed in the fire earlier that night, then Julianna could now be implicated, at least by extension, in a murder.

Edgar swallowed a yellow chocolate without chewing it and almost choked.

“Are those M&M’s?” Gabriel asked. “Can I have some?”

Edgar wiped sweat from his upper lip and wordlessly poured a generous helping of candy into the big man’s palm, wishing it were as easy to pour out this terrifying new suspicion. He almost said something to Gabriel, but then abruptly changed his mind, deciding it would be wiser to wait until he had more information.

“Thanks,” Gabriel muttered.

“My pleasure,” Edgar said, fretfully fingering the teardrop mole on his left cheek. He emptied the last of the M&M’s into his own hand, automatically reaching for a brown one first.

Gabriel was unaware of Edgar’s disquiet. An image of Julianna from when he was a small boy had just popped into his mind for no reason whatsoever; he was remembering the feel of her arm around his shoulders as the two of them stared through the screen door of their house, watching a spring rainstorm. Neither of them had spoken as the rain fell, and both of them breathed deeply, relishing the smell of the fresh air as the dust in the street settled. Gabriel had leaned into his mother, resting his head against her side; she had been wearing a red-and-yellow flowered dress that was soft on his cheek and ear. The rain had fallen fast and hard and caused a small river to form by the curb; twigs and leaves caught in the stream bobbed madly along the street and finally vanished in the storm drain at the corner. Julianna had lifted Gabriel in her arms and taken him outside; she’d swung him around in the rain and tried to teach him how to waltz, putting his feet on top of hers and waving gaily at every car that passed them by.

“Umbrellas are for sissies!” she’d cried, soaked to the skin and giggling like a child.

Gabriel hadn’t thought of that rainy day in years.

“These damn things are absolutely
addictive,
” Edgar Reilly said, fishing another bag of M&M’s out of his pocket and pulling Gabriel from his reverie. “I simply can’t get enough of them.”

Gabriel blinked away tears. His hair and face were damp with perspiration, as if that long-ago downpour had somehow left a residue.

 

At 8:57 p.m. Mary Hunter was pacing the floor of her kitchen as she listened to Sam speak to Red Kiley on the phone. She was having difficulty following Sam’s side of the conversation, though, because he wasn’t saying much. He was mostly just listening and frowning, and as his frown deepened, Mary felt fear touch her heart with a clammy finger.

Mary was not accustomed to this feeling at all, and she did not much care for it. In fact, it made her furious.

Where is my son, Lord?
she demanded silently, glaring up at the ceiling.
What were you THINKING when you let him get in the car with that crazy white woman?

Mary Hunter had no reservations about upbraiding the Almighty if she felt He wasn’t doing His job properly.

A few hours earlier, Sheriff Kiley had walked Sam through the details of why Elijah was being sought for the kidnapping of an escapee from a mental institution, and also the attempted murder of a New Hampshire State Trooper. Sam had then returned home and shared it all with Mary, and the two of them had gone over it time and again as they waited by the phone for more news, praying fervently for Elijah to walk in the door, safe and sound, and tell them it had all been some kind of silly mix-up.

Nothing they had heard thus far made any sense to them. They both knew Elijah simply wasn’t capable of the things he was accused of doing. Yet two witnesses to the kidnapping—an elderly couple named Cecil and Sarah Towpath—claimed otherwise, and there was also an inexplicable radio report to a police dispatcher from Lloyd Eagleton, the Edsel-mauled trooper. Eagleton had pulled over the car Elijah was purported to have hijacked from Julianna Dapper, only to be run down, moments later, like a hapless possum on the highway.

But not before he had called in a frantic plea for assistance, alarmed by the appearance of a second kidnapper.

Please, God.
Mary moderated her mental tone to something half plea, half command.
Don’t let my son be hurt. I’ll do anything you ask, anything at all. But don’t you DARE let them hurt my son.

To Sheriff Kiley’s credit, he hadn’t believed Elijah was guilty of anything, either. He had spent a good hour on the phone earlier that evening, trying to hammer this point home to everybody he could think of while Sam sat across the desk from him in the sheriff’s office. Red had spoken to five or six muckety-mucks in the New Hampshire and Maine State Patrols, and even to Julianna Dapper’s headshrinker in Bangor, imploring them all to not allow any harm to befall Elijah.

But apparently nobody had bothered to listen to Red Kiley.

Samuel’s eyes went wide with shock as he clung to the phone receiver. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why would they think such a thing?”

“Why would
who
think
what?
” Mary asked. Something in Sam’s voice made her throat constrict.

Sam waved her to silence as the blood drained from his face. “I see,” he whispered. “So she’s dead, then?”

Mary stopped pacing and leaned on the table for support.
Oh, Jesus.
“The crazy woman’s dead?”

Sam shook his head and covered the receiver to speak to her. “No. But some other lady got burned to death at a dairy in New Hampshire.”