A Face at the Window (19 page)

After dark, it was just too cold. Helen put her hands up in front of her face to keep the branches she blundered into from
poking her eyes out. She'd tripped over a fallen tree limb, then found a rotten branch from it and carefully put it between her teeth, so when they chattered it didn't hurt quite so much.

She hoped no poison mushrooms had been growing on it. Jody had warned her about them, not only the red death caps and white, innocent-appearing destroying angels but also false chanterelles, as sweetly yellow as real ones, and the little brown mushrooms that looked so harmless but could turn your liver and kidneys to runny mush if you didn't get to a doctor in time.

God, it was dark. She pushed through another thicket, biting her lip to keep from crying out when her bare foot went into a hole. A shower of ice water came down off the leaves every time she moved and her arms stung from shoving them into bramble thickets.

She hauled herself up, pushed the leaves to one side, and found the road suddenly. It must lead to a lake, she realized as a breeze chilled her wet clothes and hair so that she began to shiver uncontrollably again. Sooner or later all the dirt roads out here did.

Or away from one. Overhead, the moon still shone frigidly, a few last tags of cloud blurring its edges as the sky cleared for the night.
The man in the moon,
she always told the little kids she took care of,
is your guy in the sky. He's your buddy, you can tell him your secrets, and if you're very, very good, once in a while he might even an-sweryou.

So you re never alone,
she'd told those little children, but now she knew it had been a lie. In the moonlight, the dirt road looked nearly white. If it didn't go to the lake, it would lead back out toward the tar road, where there were houses, and people who would help her. But she had no idea which way was which.

If you're lost, stay in one place and let people come and find you, Jody always said. You roam around, you turn into a moving
target and that's harder to locate. But he'd also told her once that if nobody knows where to look for you, you'd damn well better keep moving, especially if it's cold. You lie down or give up and you can die out here just as easy as falling off a—

But in the midst of this thought something
moved
in the bit of branch she had wedged into her mouth. Convulsively she ejected it, her whole body spasming in disgust; next came everything she had eaten or drunk in, it seemed, the past five years or so.

Gasping, she struggled up from her hands and knees, thinking hard to herself:
Don't freak out.
It was a bug or a grub, that was all. Disgusting, but nothing dangerous. If she got hungry enough, she might find a few of them on purpose and gobble ‘em down fast, so she didn't have to think about it.

Hey, if those skinny, silly girls on the reality TV shows could do it…Wash ‘em down with puddle water; there you've got your protein, calories, and enough fluids to keep you alive for a little while, Jody would've insisted.

Grinning at the look on her face when he said it. But then he would take pity on her, toss her a Slim Jim or maybe a piece of chocolate, let her sip the brandy-laced black coffee he kept hot in his own silver thermos. She'd have killed for some of it now.

But shivering…shivering was good. It kept you warm; if you were shaking, you were still in the game. It was when you stopped that you were in real trouble, your body shutting down so that it couldn't even try anymore. Swirling around the old bowl-o-rama, as Jody would've put it. And puddle water…

That was a good idea, too; wincing, she dropped to her knees again, felt around with her hands for water. The earlier downpour had been brief but very intense; probably in one of the road ruts there'd be a—

Suddenly from somewhere in the distance came the roar of
an engine, getting louder. Panic seized her; they were coming back. The guy who had nearly killed her had changed his mind; they knew where they'd left her and that she was still alive, and…

Hide.
Weeping again, she scrambled to the side of the road just as a pair of yellow headlights appeared from around a curve. Pulling wet branches down in front of herself she crouched there, shaking more from fear now than from the awful cold, holding her breath and praying not to be spotted.

It wasn't a car, though. The engine's unmufflered roar said it was an all-terrain vehicle. Out here on the remote dirt roads, local kids raced around on them sometimes at night, whooping and hollering. Tim did it, and his friends, though she had never wanted to go with them. He said she was a pussy for not wanting to. But
was
it just local kids, or … ?

As the lights and roaring engine drew nearer, she came to a decision. Those guys wouldn't be on an ATV. "Help," she cried as she staggered from between the branches. "Help me, please.…"

But too late. By the time she managed to drag herself onto the road, the small, chunky vehicle with two people on board had gone by, and the engine roar was too loud for them to have heard her calling to them.

She took a few staggering, hopeless steps in the direction they had gone, then stopped. "Please," she whispered. "Please."

But the man in the moon was the only one watching, the only one listening. And now Helen guessed that sometime or another in the recent past, she must not have been good.

Nope. Not very good at all. Because no matter how she wept, begged, bargained, or pleaded, her face turned to the sky…

The man in the moon wasn't talking. Or helping; she was all alone out here, her mouth was bleeding again—a lot harder, she
realized as she spat out a hot, copious mouthful of fresh blood— and if she didn't get warm soon, in the shape she was in she was probably not going to survive the night. Already, all she really wanted to do was crawl back into the branches and sleep.

The idea sent a needle of fright through her.

Don't you lie down, girl. Don't you do it.

Jody's voice, in that tone he used when he wasn't kidding. Like when she tipped over the kayak because he insisted, saying it was safety training.
I'll drown,
she'd wailed at him, and he'd said
Okay, drown, then. Go ahead. But just try swimming a little while you're drowning, will you?

Just try. So she had. She wasn't a bad swimmer, actually; they both knew that. And of course in the end she hadn't drowned.

But she was drowning now.
Swim a little,
his voice said, so she did, moving through the night air like a person underwater. The road went both ways; no telling whether the ATV had been heading into the woods or out.

Knowing as if from a distance that she really was badly injured—otherwise why would her mouth still be bleeding this way?—she took a swaying step.

And then another, shakier still, not really aware in the end which direction it was that she had irrevocably chosen.

"You didn't tell
me you were worried about Campbell."

Wade set the heavily laden tray on the coffee table in the parlor. She looked down at him from where she teetered on the top step of a stepladder at the center of the room.

"I wasn't. Not then. Just a funny feeling I had, that something wasn't right."

She looked back up at the old brass chandelier overhead. "It
wasn't until after you left that Sandy O’Neill called to say Ozzie Campbell was missing."

The most recent message on the machine in the phone alcove had been Sandy again at last, saying there had been developments, Larry Trotta had new plans, and that she should call Sandy back once more as soon as possible.

But when Wade tried he'd been treated to yet another round of telephone tag, either because Sandy was urgently involved in something else, or just because it was late. Jake unscrewed another lightbulb, resisted the strong urge to hurl it against the wall, and tucked it into her sweater pocket instead.

"You could," Wade offered mildly, "try keeping your hands busy with this food."

He waved at the coffee table: eggs, toast, browned slices of Canadian bacon. A tall glass of orange juice glistened. "Mm-hmm," she said. "In a minute."

The lightbulbs weren't energy-efficient. She had a whole bag of the less electricity-wasting kind, and if she took the time to insert them now, life would be a lot more … a lot
better…

"Jake," he said kindly. "You do know how ridiculous this is, right?"

"Right," she responded, gulping back tears. She knew. But it was too dark outside now to work on the sidewalk hole, and if she stopped working altogether, then the idle hands that were the devil's tools would just…would simply…

Wade just stood watching her until without wanting to she gave in and climbed carefully down off the ladder. "It wasn't me, you know. The text message."

"I know. I know it wasn't. Now get over there and eat some of that stuff I just cooked for you. Or I might get the idea you don't appreciate me."

It got a weak laugh out of her, which was why he'd said it. "Yeah, like there's a chance of that."

She sat, and ate a bite of the egg to placate him. Half an hour later, having cleaned her plate, she lay on the sofa with pillows shoved in behind her and an afghan that Ellie had knitted in happier days spread colorfully over her legs.

Another mug of tea, this one with whiskey in it, steamed in her hands. "So that's the story," she finished unhappily.

She'd laid it all out for him: Ozzie Campbell's going AWOL from his usual haunts, the guys at Wadsworth's who'd had a photo of her, Helen and Lee's disappearance, and the doll on the beach, followed by her visit to Hoke Sturdevant's place and her venture into the gravel pit.

"Campbell text-messaged Bob Arnold," she said. "To get me out of there, I'm certain of it. He didn't want to kill me, just scare me, just to show me what he's capable of. Because he wants something and he doesn't think I'll cooperate so he's scaring me to death, to soften me up."

She heard her voice rise, controlled it with an effort. "Sorry. Anyway, that's the story."

Wade nodded. "Tell me again why this guy's not in jail?"

Sighing, she looked around at the comfortable room. An tique rugs, heavy fringed draperies, and velvet upholstery all com bined with the crocheted doilies and painted lamps to give the parlor a nineteenth-century feeling. Dark woodwork, varnished floor, and old gold-medallion wallpaper increased the back-in-time atmosphere.

"Well-known businessman with roots in the community," she replied finally. "Like the roots on a rotten tooth, if you ask me." But nobody had. "And a thirty-year-old murder case doesn't ex-actly spell imminent danger to the public," she added.

She looked up at Wade. "You believe me, right? That Campbell did call me, that he—"

"Of course I do." He'd made tea for himself, too, minus the booze. "I'm just wondering … I mean, I've got to assume that just calling you voids his bail. Why he would take the risk of leaving the jurisdiction? Because that—"

"Is even worse," she agreed. "Which is why I just do not see what he could possibly hope to gain by…"

"He knows something we don't know," Wade said thoughtfully, almost to himself.

"And it's made him desperate," she agreed. "But…what?"

He got up. "I don't know, but whatever it is, he's sure gone to a lot of trouble over it. Accomplices, details, timing—that back-hoe couldn't have been planned, but the location must've been. You don't just happen upon a handy gravel pit to stash a car in."

The cell phone lay on the coffee table. "Did you put fresh batteries in that?" he asked.

"Yes. It's working fine, now. And I set the speed-dial up, again, too, Bob Arnold and the state cops. And the Federal Marine number. Not," she went on hastily, "that I'm going to need any of them…"

"Uh-huh," Wade said, looking unfooled. He was not the kind of husband who asked for assurances: that for instance she would lock the doors, stay on the couch, and watch an old movie on TV while she waited for news of Helen and Lee.

He knew better. Also, he was about to take a helicopter ride out over the ocean, get himself lowered onto a ship's deck on the same rope ladder they'd hauled him up with hours earlier, then pilot the disabled ship in through the ferocious tides, murderous currents, and treacherous granite ledges with which the local waterways were so plentifully furnished. So in the risk-avoidance department, he was no one to talk.

"Wish I could stay," he said, massaging the back of her neck with a big hand. But they both knew he couldn't.

"Me, too." She let her head rest in his palm. "D'you think they'll come anymore tonight? The FBI guys, I mean, to…"

Question me.
"No," Wade said. "I asked Bob, outside. He said they won't even get here until early tomorrow morning. And it'll take them a little while to get set up and organized, probably."

"Oh." Then: "Wade, tell me the truth. Was it stupid of me, going in there?"

He shrugged. "Don't know. I'd have done it, I can tell you that much. If Lee was in there, hurt, and you just missed saving her life because you waited for Bob to get there and help you…"

"I could've called him and not waited."

"There's that. But if you did, and she wasn't there—which as it turned out she wasn't, remember—then you're right about that, too. I mean, there goes your believability with Bob."

She laughed humorlessly. "Which is gone anyway, or nearly. Oh, he's trying to be nice about it," she allowed, "but you know what he really thinks of all this."

Wade nodded slowly. "That you're upset about Campbell's trial. That it's brought it all back to you, all the memories. Of your mom, and…"

That her judgment was clouded. Which maybe it was; how could it not be? A pair of earrings gleamed bloodred in her mind's eye briefly and vanished as Wade went to the hall, returning with a small, red-smeared cloth object.

"Here. It was in your car. I put it on the radiator to dry."

Lee's doll…Jake smoothed the tangled yarn hair and gingham skirt whose red dye had run until it was pink. The buttons at the centers of the painted eye-triangles had come off, and the cheek circles stained the face a feverish-looking crimson.