Wicked Fix (40 page)

just haven't figured out yet. And you know, I'll bet

someone thinks that also makes them villains."

He thought about that. "Like if a woman goes to a

bar, she ends up having to fight off some drunk, people

say she shouldn't have been there in the first place."

"Right. Or a guy ends up living in his car and eating

out of a soup kitchen. Nobody ever says, Hey, that

could be me. They say the guy's a loser, he should try

harder. He gets blamed, and so does she. The victim

gets turned into the villain 'cause it makes somebody

feel, Hey, that couldn't be me. Or something," I trailed

off unhappily.

"Huh." I could see him turning it over in his head.

But then he frowned.

"Close, but no cigar. For one thing, you'd have to

kill off the whole darn town. Everybody got victimized

by Reuben, or almost everybody, at one time or another.

And," he put the nail in the coffin of my theory,

"it still doesn't account for Weasel. If he had been

hooked up to our group in any way, Jacobia, I'd remember

it."

"Oh." The energy went out of me again. He was

right.

"Sorry." He shrugged helplessly.

"That's okay." But it was something about being

a victim, I was sure, combined with some threat or

actual behavior of Reuben's that had gotten it all going

again.

And something more, a third thing I kept almost

realizing. But every time I tried to get my mind

around it, it fluttered away, as wispy and elusive as

gossamer.

The lights were on in the dining room but there

wasn't a sound from in there. I got up to look, found

Sam hunched over the dratted Ouija board.

I wished he weren't. I'd managed to rationalize my

creepy experience with k; just my subconscious, I'd decided,

spitting out the gist of my current preoccupation

again and again.

But I couldn't get over my uneasiness about it.

Around me, the old house was as silent as a held

breath. A pair of earphones were on Sam's head; he

glanced up and saw me.

"Hey," he said, pulling the earphones off.

"Hi. What are you doing?"

He shrugged. "Just fooling with this. The radio

gets shortwave. If I listen enough, maybe I'll be able to

translate Morse in my head. You know, like if you live

in France pretty soon you can speak French?"

From the earphones came the distant, tinny sound

of dots and dashes. Something about Morse code had

always sounded urgent to me, even when it probably

wasn't.

"Dad called earlier, kind of upset," Sam went on.

"He says the diet in jail is not nutritionally balanced,

it's a violation of his rights. Also the reading material is

inadequate."

I could imagine. "You settle him down?"

"Yeah." Sam managed a grin: his game face. I was

glad to see it, didn't like thinking about how long he

might have to wear it.

Now I needed my own. "Did he ask about the interview?

With the DA, I mean?"

On the table, the Ouija board lay silent and motionless,

its black letters and numerals sharp against its

polished surface.

"Yeah. He told me again," Sam recited, imitating

Victor uncannily, "that it's out of my hands, I had no

choice, and if I beat myself up about it anymore, he's

going to kick my butt."

It's one of the very most annoying things about

Victor, that once in a while he will blindside you with

bighearted behavior. It would be so much easier just to

hate him up one side and down the other.

"Don't stay up late. Work tomorrow," I reminded

Sam, but he had the earphones back on already and

couldn't hear me.

In the hall I spotted a fluff of dog hair, like a

shadow in the corner. But when I bent to reach for it,

there was nothing. As I straightened, my glance fell

onto the hall shelf.

The package Terence had shoved into my hands

that afternoon was still there, wrapped in brown paper,

marked private & confidential. It was addressed

to a firm of attorneys in Bangor, Maine.

Hefting it, I discovered that it felt like spiral notebooks

stacked one on top of another; you could feel

the wire bindings along the side of the parcel. Half a

dozen of them, maybe.

No stamps on it, though, and the string was starting

to come undone. Tape, actually, would be better

for it. I could rewrap it, and perhaps just glance at the

contents as I did so.

"Guess I'll go on up to bed," Sam said. He

snapped the radio off, interrupting a sputter of dot

and-dash. Then he paused, squinting at the Ouija

board in puzzlement.

"Something funny about that thing," he said.

I feel that falling out of the sky can be prevented

by not going up into it. Ellie, however,

does not share this opinion, as I was

reminded very early the next morning when

she showed up at a ghastly hour, full of what I regarded

as a ghastly plan.

"Ellie, these notebooks," I said, waving at them

spread out on the kitchen table. "They're ..."

"We'll be back by lunchtime," she interrupted

firmly in the tone her pirate ancestors might have used

while persuading people to walk the plank. "Or probably

before. Grand Manan's only half an hour, as the

crow flies."

I did not point out that crows fly with wings that

are attached by muscles and tendons, and that if God

had meant me to do it too, He'd have attached some to

me.

"But," I protested uselessly, "the notebooks

are ..."

"I got a phone call while I was out last night. Message

from George's cousin, on the machine."

Which didn't help much. Half of downeast Maine

consists of George Valentine's cousins, the other half

his aunts and uncles.

"So?"

"So Harriet Thorogood wants to talk to us."

I stared. "Harriet ... Boxy's mother? I thought

she was ..."

"Dead, I know. But she isn't. She's in a nursing

home."

"Lovely. Why didn't you mention this to me? Anyway,

I'm very happy for her, that she's alive. Still, I fail

to see how flying over to see her there will advance our

understanding of anything. In fact, after flying at all I

will be in no shape to ..."

But Ellie had already turned off the coffeemaker,

filled up Monday's water bowl, checked the stove

knobs to make sure they were off, and scribbled a note.

"I'll explain on the way," she promised, hustling

me out.

But she didn't, or at least not immediately, because

Ellie had been up and going strong since her usual rising

time of five in the morning--in Maine, late sleeping

is seen as a sure sign of deficient moral character--and

had been to the Waco Diner with George for breakfast.

So she had plenty of news:

Terence had indeed been transferred to Portland

and Paddy Farrell had driven down there to be with

him. Paddy would come back this evening, Ellie went

on, to close up the studio; after that he would return to

the medical center in Portland for the duration of Terence's

stay there.

"No word on Terence's actual condition," she

added, "other than that he's still unconscious and in

intensive care."

So he wouldn't be letting on who had clobbered

him anytime soon. I'd brought along the notebooks,

which now lay in my lap. They were Terence's diaries,

and what they contained was still spinning in my head

like the glass bits in a kaleidoscope.

"Ellie," I began, picking up a notebook, "we

need ..."

Instead of listening, she set the parking brake on

the Jeep in the visitor's lot at the airfield and got out.

Set in a pasture overlooking blue water, the airstrip

looked too short to land more than a helicopter but

was actually long enough to accommodate a good

sized Gulfstream, a fact that was of little comfort to me

since I didn't want to go up in any of those either.

Reluctantly, I got out of the Jeep. The air was crisp

and washed clean by the storm of the night before,

smelling of sea salt and evergreens, and the light had

the fragile clarity of a Maine island in the early morning,

unspoiled and full of bright innocent promise.

On the other hand, waiting on the tarmac was an

aircraft that looked as if it had been glued together out

of balsa wood and construction paper. Eyeing it, I

opened my mouth to object.

But that was useless too. "We," said Ellie, "are

going. In that. Now." She marched toward the plane.

The low metal Quonset building of Quoddy Air,

Inc., looked like something that leather-helmeted

cropdusters flew biplanes out of, back in the 1930s.

The whole idea of my going up into the sky was ridiculous

anyway, I thought wildly.

And then I was going up in it. Strapped in, shaking,

and in imminent danger of supplying my breakfast

for examination by my flying companions, I saw the

end of the runway vanish under the nose of the toy

plane. Another moment and Passamaquoddy Bay fell

abruptly away beneath us; under the circumstances, I

guessed it was better than seeing it rise abruptly toward

us, but not much better.

The plane banked right. The pilot was cheerful. I

took this as a good sign. Until he turned off the engine.

"You know," I said faintly, in what I imagined was

a nice, conversational tone, "I believe that when the

airplane is actually in the air, hundreds and hundreds

of feet off the ground or in this case, actually, the ice

cold water ..."

"You don't have to scream," Ellie said. "I can hear

you."

"Beautiful, isn't it?" the pilot asked. "Nothing but

wind noise. Hey, look down there--it's a whale."

It was a big, dark shape moving along very slowly

in the indigo bay, and I had no doubt that I would be

getting much more closely acquainted with it in the

immediate future.

"Better fire it up again," Ellie suggested kindly.

"Jake's getting pale."