The Third Hill North of Town (23 page)

Elijah obeyed Jon without hesitation. The other car drew even with them before Jon could put the Beetle in gear; it looked to be a Rambler, not a police car, and although the driver turned his head to look at them, he passed without slowing, his face a pale blur.

Julianna abruptly stopped singing and sat up.

“What’s Fred Marcy doing out so late at night?” she asked, her eyes following the taillights of the Rambler. “If he doesn’t get home soon, his wife will skin him alive.” She faced front again, feeling much more like herself now that she’d solved the mystery of why they weren’t back in Pawnee yet, where they belonged. “You don’t know Esther Marcy like Ben and I do, Jon,” she continued. “But she’s got a frightful temper. She once caught poor old Fred making eyes at Alice Boswell at the Fourth of July picnic, and she dumped a whole pitcher of iced coffee in his lap, right in front of everybody! Remember that, Ben?”

Elijah was badly shaken. The random encounter with the other car, though harmless in itself, had reminded him just how much danger they were in. His concerns about Julianna and Jon had distracted him, and until the Rambler’s approaching headlights had intruded on his conversation with Jon, he had actually forgotten that even the routine act of stopping to pee on a remote highway now posed a significant threat. It would have been an ugly, unfair coincidence for a cop to show up right then and there, of course, but considering their recent history anything was possible: They simply couldn’t afford to be so careless.

I need to get my head out of my ass and quit acting like a douche bag!
he told himself angrily. He still didn’t know what a douche bag was, but he knew he’d been behaving like one.

Julianna leaned forward. “Ben?” she prodded, sounding anxious. “Didn’t you hear what I said?”

Elijah sighed, pulling himself together. “Yeah.” He was still bent over in his seat with his forehead on the dashboard. He sat up again with an effort. “Sure I remember that picnic, Julianna. I laughed so hard I crapped my pants.”

He glanced over at Jon and they stared at each other for a moment in silence. Jon raised his eyebrows at him and a second later both of them began to grin in spite of themselves.

“Language, Ben,” Julianna reminded, lightly flicking Elijah’s ear with an admonitory forefinger. “We’ll be home again soon, and if your mother hears you talking like that she won’t let you out of your house for a year.”

It took every ounce of Jon Tate’s remaining self-control to keep from cackling like a madman.
Maybe I’m nuts, too,
he thought.
Maybe I’ve been in the asylum with Julianna this whole time, and I’m just hallucinating. Maybe some doctor snuck some drugs into our pureed potatoes during supper, and I’m really strapped in a wheelchair someplace watching an episode of Gunsmoke.

“She’s right, Elijah,” he murmured in a strained voice. “You could get into a lot of trouble for that sort of thing.”

Elijah actually laughed aloud. It came out as more of a sob than a chuckle, though, and it died quickly. “Yeah,” he agreed, wincing as he rubbed his ear. “If I’m not careful I might even get my mouth washed out with soap.”

Both boys attempted to hold on to their grins a little longer, but it was no use. They each took a deep breath at the same time, and let the air slowly out of their lungs in a synchronized sigh that only Julianna found amusing. Elijah looked out the passenger window as Jon put the Beetle in gear and pulled back on the highway.

 

Dr. Edgar Reilly looked out the passenger window of Sam and Mary Hunter’s blue Dodge pickup, whistling softly between his teeth. His whistle was almost inaudible, but the tune he had chosen was familiar enough to both Sam and Mary that neither had any trouble identifying it from the few snippets of melody they could pick out above the hum of the tires on the pavement.

Edgar Reilly often whistled “I’m a Little Teapot” without being aware he was doing it. All of his staff at the mental hospital in Bangor were familiar with this quirk, though none of them could have said for sure what provoked it. Connor Lipkin (the nearsighted Jungian) had postulated to the others more than once that it was likely only an unconscious attempt to alleviate stress, but Nurse Gable (who had known the good doctor longer) contended it went deeper than this, and was almost certainly a nervous reaction to repressed feelings of inadequacy. Jeptha Morgan (the freckled young orderly who was new to the hospital and unaccustomed to the nuances of psychoanalytical thinking) had only heard Edgar’s rendition of the teapot song once, yet argued forcefully it indicated nothing beyond a “shitty taste in music.”

In this case, all three diagnoses would have been accurate.

The current round of sub-tonal whistling had begun shortly after Edgar realized he was taking up nearly half the pickup’s ample seat. The Hunters were conspicuously trim and neat, and as such required little space for themselves. The two of them together, in fact, were more compact than Edgar by himself, and no matter how tightly he wedged himself against the passenger door to allow Sam and Mary more room, he still felt flabby and intrusive. Mary’s request that he not smoke heightened his discomfort, as did the lack of air conditioning in the truck, yet it wasn’t until Edgar made his fourth attempt to share his M&M’s with Mary—and was rebuffed, yet again—that his lips parted to emit their first soulful, sibilant lament.

Sam Hunter had also declined to accept any candy (with a polite but firm “No, thank you”), but it was Mary’s nonverbal rejections that Edgar found particularly unsettling. He sensed no judgment of him per se in these refusals, yet there was still something hurtful to him about the curt, disinterested shake of her head, something distancing and remorseless, that made him feel the need to conceal just how many M&M’s he was consuming. To his own chagrin, therefore, he had begun to sneak them from his pocket, one by one, and pop them into his mouth whenever Mary’s head was turned. It was a distressing stratagem on many levels, but the most vexing aspect was that Edgar could no longer alphabetize the chocolates by color before eating them. And as this lessened his enjoyment of the entire snacking experience to a remarkable degree, Edgar couldn’t help but resent Mary for putting him in such a position. To be forced to engage in such a childish subterfuge was humiliating, and far beneath his dignity as both a doctor and a man.

I’m projecting,
he scolded himself, palming an M&M in his left hand (much as Julianna Dapper had concealed her caplets of Thorazine in the dementia unit).
She’s not forcing me to do anything.

He knew this was the case, yet the more he tried to reason away his resentment, the more influence it gained over his psyche. Mary’s inflexible behavior had begun to feel like an ascetic, sugar-free gauntlet, flung down on the seat between them, and he found himself taking it personally.

Maybe she just doesn’t like chocolate,
he speculated. Air hissed through his two front teeth.
Or maybe she’s too worried about her son to eat anything at all.

It was a little past four in the morning in upstate New York. Fire Marshal Orville Horvath and the Stockton Dairy Farm—where Chuck Stockton would soon make an unsuccessful attempt to hang himself—were ninety miles behind them, Gabriel Dapper was following them in his Cadillac at a hundred yards’ distance, and Julianna and her two “captors” had just finished urinating under a starlit sky somewhere in eastern Indiana. Edgar knew nothing of Chuck Stockton’s suicidal intentions, of course, or the whereabouts of Julianna and her companions, yet he still had more than enough to occupy his attention without also obsessing over Mary Hunter’s unwillingness to respond to his overtures of friendship.

I’m behaving like a lovesick boy who’s just been spurned by the most popular girl in school!
He flushed at this heartless self-assessment.
What in God’s name is the matter with me?

He squared his shoulders and peered manfully through the windshield, reminding himself there was no time for such foolishness. Lives might well depend on him in the coming hours, and the only thing that truly mattered was to find Julianna before she hurt herself or anybody else, and return her safely to the hospital.

His
hospital, where people wouldn’t dream of brushing aside whatever kindnesses he wished to bestow.

The key to Julianna Dapper’s psychosis, he believed (attempting to ignore Mary as much as she appeared to be ignoring him), was already in his grasp. It clearly had something to do with all the people Julianna had spoken of time and again in the past month. Her parents and two older brothers figured prominently in many of the remarks she’d made, but many other names seemed almost as important—the young boy “Ben,” for instance, whom she never failed to mention. The selective nature of her memories regarding these individuals who had once been dear to her made for a fascinating case study in itself, but the problem was that Edgar had no idea how much of what he had gleaned from her was rooted in fact, and how much was sheer fantasy.

Thus far, he had not been able to confirm the existence of the town of Pawnee itself, nor a single soul she had referred to. This by itself wasn’t necessarily a reason to discount her tales, however. The events she described had occurred (ostensibly) nearly four decades ago, and a tiny town such as the one Julianna said she came from might have changed names or been assimilated into a neighboring community in the intervening years, and its citizens, too, would have been swallowed by time, a world war, and God knew what else. Nevertheless, since Edgar had been able to learn nothing useful about Julianna’s early life from any of her coworkers and friends in Bangor, he was forced to question almost everything she’d said.

Oddly enough, Gabriel Dapper, too, possessed little knowledge of his mother’s childhood—or so Gabriel had explained to Edgar early on in Julianna’s treatment. She had always been closemouthed about her past, even with her son, and the most she had been willing to share was that she had grown up on a farm in Missouri, and that her parents and brothers had died long before he was born. Whenever Gabriel pushed for more information, however, she changed the subject, or became cross with him and abruptly ended the conversation. She was apparently just as taciturn about Gabriel’s father, and Gabriel had long since given up asking the kinds of questions he knew would only cause her pain.

Edgar’s mind drifted again.

The M
&
M’s are a metaphor of some sort,
he thought irrelevantly, pursing his lips as his inner demons renewed their assault on his peace of mind.
Perhaps I’m seeing them as a symbol of a shared spiritual journey, which would explain why Mary’s rejection feels so emasculating.

 

Edgar’s “shared spiritual journey” with the Hunters had begun an hour and a half earlier, when he had worked up the nerve to speak to the black couple in the driveway of the dairy farm while Fire Marshal Horvath was over by the barn and Gabriel was sitting alone in the Cadillac. Edgar was still out of breath from Lucy the Rottweiler’s vicious attack, and from the hike back up the hill in the pale moonlight. His growing suspicions about Julianna’s role in her own kidnapping—and the subsequent house fire—were also contributing to his breathlessness; he was trying to work up the nerve to share these concerns but didn’t quite know how to broach the subject.

“That stupid damn dog should be euthanized,” he’d rasped, hoping the Hunters would be willing to respond to this conversational gambit.

Sam and Mary had turned to him. Mary’s tone wasn’t harsh when she spoke, but neither was it welcoming. “What can we do for you, Dr. Reilly?”

Edgar had clasped his hands in front of his waist and looked furtively around the yard before answering. Orville and his underlings were all out of hearing range, yet Edgar instinctively lowered his voice.

“I believe I may know where to look for your son,” he’d blurted.

The Hunters’ dark eyes had fastened on him with an intensity that made his mouth go dry. The naked, desperate hope he could read on their faces tugged at both his heart and his conscience.

“How is that possible?” Mary, too, had spoken in a whisper. Her voice and gaze were unwavering but her narrow shoulders trembled ever so slightly. “What do you know that we don’t?”

“It’s only a guess.” Edgar fidgeted, choosing his words with extreme care. “But I think . . . well, it’s certainly possible, that is, though not necessarily the case at all . . . but I think Elijah may actually be . . . well, he just
might
be taking Julianna home.”

This hadn’t been exactly true, of course, but Edgar allowed himself the little white lie, not yet willing to overly implicate Julianna in all that had occurred.

“You think Elijah is doing
what?
” Mary’s voice rose enough to alarm Edgar, but she’d regained control of her emotions quickly. She glanced at Sam for several long moments, then at last turned back to Edgar. “You don’t think our son kidnapped Julianna,” she said bluntly. “You think
she’s
the one calling the shots.”

The quickness of her perception alarmed Edgar; he’d thought it safer not to answer.

“What do you mean, Elijah is ‘taking Julianna home’?” Sam had demanded, struggling to keep up. “Why would he do that?”

Edgar looked away, feigning an interest in the ashes of the farmhouse. “I’m not sure,” he said. He had felt their eyes probing the side of his face and he began to squirm. “Perhaps he’s just being a good Samaritan,” he muttered.

Mary had snorted. “I don’t believe that for a moment,” she said, “and I don’t think you do, either, Dr. Reilly.” She glanced down at the forlorn shadow of the Edsel on the highway, with its nose pointed due west. “But if you’re right about where they might be headed, then they’re going the wrong way, aren’t they? We were told Julianna lived in Bangor before she got sent to the funny farm.”