A Face at the Window (31 page)

W
hat the hell happened to you?" The woman in
the purple car slowed alongside Helen Nevelson on Route 1 in the gathering dawn.

It was cold, and Helen understood in a numb distant way that she was hurt and wet. She'd managed to limp only a few hundred yards since she'd begun walking again.

If that. Part of the way she'd crawled. "Nothing."

Nugh-ugh.
She put one foot in front of the other. The woman pulled the car closer to the side of the road, inching along to keep pace with Helen, and leaned farther toward the open window.

"Hey. Hey, listen. Get in the car, I'll take you where you want to go. Come on, you can't—"

An eighteen-wheeler blitzed by in the other direction. The driver's face appeared whitely in the high windshield, peering down curiously; then he was gone.

The woman pulled the car to a stop and got out, hurrying to catch up with Helen and move in front of her, blocking the way.

"Hey," she said again, standing with her feet planted apart and her hands on her hips. "Look at me."

The woman was forty or so, a big, pretty brunette with dark eyes and a lot of red lipstick, wearing wire-rimmed glasses. "Listen," the woman said. "You can't stay out here, you'll catch your death."

Helen wanted to laugh, but if she did she was sure that she wouldn't be able to stop. Then they would take her to what Jody called the laughing academy, and lock her in a room and she would never get out again, just laughing and laughing.

Or crying. She didn't remember waking up, or how she got out of the culvert. She was pretty sure she was dying, but before she did that, she had to find Bob Arnold and tell him—

"I've got a thermos," wheedled the woman. "Hot coffee, with plenty of cream and sugar. Look," her voice turned pleading, "you can sit in the car and drink it. I'll turn off the ignition, you can leave the door open so if you want to get out, you can—"

"No." Helen turned suddenly toward the purple car. Inside it a radio was playing. "Don't turn it off." Because trying to walk just wasn't working. "I need to get to…"

Before Helen could finish, the woman was all smiles. "Good. Come on, get in, then, and we'll go."

Under other circumstances, Helen thought she might like the woman, even trust her. She didn't think she'd ever be doing that again, though. Or anyway not for a long time.

If she lived. Carefully she got into the car. The heater was running, and what looked like a doctor's bag sat on the backseat by a pair of white shoes. An ironed white smock hung neatly on a hanger in one of the rear passenger windows.

"Well, all right then," the woman said heartily, as if they were off on some enjoyable day trip. But Helen could still feel the woman's eyes on her, and hear the clinical note in her voice.

Deftly the woman twisted the top off the thermos with one hand, while driving very fast with the other. "Here. Try to get some of this into you. Don't worry about spilling."

Warm vapor drifted from the open thermos. Helen lifted the bottle shakily to her mouth, winced as the hot liquid touched her lips. But she got some of the sweet, milky stuff onto her tongue and just let it sit there, heedless of the pain, before managing to swallow it.

It tasted good. "Thank you," she whispered, but a sob came out with the words so she shut her mouth angrily again.

"You're welcome." Helen had never ridden with a woman who drove so fast before, handling the car briskly and without the slightest hint that slowing down a bit might be a fine idea.

Good,
Helen thought.
If I get there in time I can still…
Panic seized her; she couldn't remember, again. Everything kept fading in and out: bigger and smaller, lighter and darker. Awake and not-quite…She drank some more of the sweet, hot stuff in the thermos and tried to stay focused, without success.

She jerked back into awareness as the woman began talking again. Outside, the sky went on filling with pearly light.

"Look, I don't know what happened to you. But I've seen some badly beat-up women in my life and you look like one of
them. Do you want to go back to Calais, go to the hospital and get checked out and maybe talk to the police?"

She glanced over at Helen. "I'll stay with you if you do," she added kindly, slowing the car as if to begin turning around.

"No!" Helen lurched forward, nearly dropping the thermos as she flailed for the door handle. She dimly recalled having jumped out of one vehicle already; she could do it again.

"Okay, okay," the woman said hastily. "Forget it, you don't have to. I won't try to make you do anything you don't want to."

Good,
Helen thought.
You'd better not.
Because sitting back again, she'd felt something poking her in the ribs, and when she stuck her hand in the pocket of the old sweater she'd stolen, she found the knife she'd taken from the awful man's camp.

He's lucky I didn't remember it then,
Helen thought.
When I was in his truck.
Because it was dawning on her now that she'd have used it.

That she still would. She let her hand close around it, her thumb on the button that made the long, sharp blade spring out. The sky to the east was red, trees lining the blacktop like scissored outlines against it. "Eastport," she mumbled, her mouth feeling like broken glass and hot coals jumbled together.

"Eastport it is," the woman said mildly. But she had other plans. Doing the right thing, the helpful thing, was important to this woman, Helen could tell. And the right thing now was medical attention.

But Helen still had the knife, and even though she couldn't quite remember just at the moment what she had to do instead of seeing a doctor, she would recall it again soon.

Surely she would. Meanwhile, though, the heat in the car was beginning to be overpowering; woozily, Helen felt the dark armies of unconsciousness getting ready to overtake her once more.

Suddenly and without any warning her mouth began bleeding again, a hot rush pouring down the front of the stolen sweater. Helen leaned forward, one hand gripping the car's center console, meaning to tell the whole story so even if she passed out, the woman could still find Bob Arnold and tell him…

What? A sob escaped her, along with another bright red gush. The woman at the wheel looked far away, though Helen could still smell her shampoo and the faint, sweet scent of her perfume.

A whine like the sound of a dentist's drill heard through a fog of anesthetic filled her head; as the woman's alarmed face loomed suddenly over her, she felt the car swerve sharply to the side of the road.

Panicked, she pulled the knife.

Jake felt the
outboard lurch purposefully, the tiller calm and the boat's wild thrash subsiding to a gentle bounce. And then they were out: of the whirlpool, the danger, the—

"Oh, baby." Lee still sat on the boat's bottom. "We're going home."

Directly ahead lay Dog Island, not far from the cliffs and the beach. Behind Lee lay Marky and Anthony, blessedly still; in the last instant before the current whipsawed them out of the Old Sow, Marky had managed to hit Anthony in the head with one of the oars, knocking him out, then lost consciousness again himself.

So the two men were out of action and they were all nearly on shore, now, though the water leaking through the boat bottom was still getting deeper, fast.
Surely there's a fix for that….

With one hand still on the tiller she got the tackle box out
again, found a bobber made of a cork lying among some fish hooks in it, and after carving the cork smaller with the cheap, fake Swiss Army knife she leaned over and fished out of Anthony's back pocket, stuck it into the bubbling hole and stepped on it.

Presto, one ex-leak.

Next she got Marky's .38 from the tackle box, felt it over briefly, and snapped it back in again. The sun at her back climbed fast, warming and sweetening the breeze and setting the waves flashing cheerily as if they hadn't just been trying to kill her.

Steadying the tiller, she aimed the skiff at Eastport's breakwater, a mile or so distant, keeping in close to shore just in case that cork popped out. Once they got there she could hand these two jerks over to Bob Arnold, and then go…

Home.
But as they passed under the high, granite cliffs of Dog Island's precipitous drop-off, the treacherous Knife Edge jutting out like a bony finger over the rocks below, a new worry struck her: Was Campbell up there, watching? Cursing his luck, perhaps, still trying to think of some other way to get at her? Re -flexively she sent the skiff veering away from the cliffs, out of the shallow water, and was instantly and without warning caught up in another current, its force whipping the tiller from her unprepared grip and startling an oath from her. Lee's head bumped the side of the boat, hard; she began wailing.

"Sorry, baby, oh, I'm so—" Busy, actually, was what she was all of a sudden. The water, so deceptively calm only a moment earlier, was perilous and confusing again: steer straight at the waves rucking up between here and shore and the skiff might flip. Parallel the waves, and they'd swamp for sure.

But she'd escaped the current once; surely she could do it again, now when they were so near safety that she could see the
downtown pier's tall pilings, thick as tree trunks. Wielding the tiller like a club, she was very slowly winning over the water's stubborn power until Anthony reared up suddenly.

His gaze focused and found her. Bellowing, he threw himself at her. "No!" she shouted at him as behind her the skiff's wooden transom sank under his sudden weight. Fully submerged, the engine burbled and died; in the next instant they were all in the water.

Struggling and choking,
Anthony flailed his arms and looked around for help. But there wasn't any. He went under, surfacing at last with a raw, whooping gasp that went like fire into his lungs, his hands grabbing uselessly for something, anything to help him stay afloat.

But there wasn't any of that, either, until something jabbed his leg. Sharp and jagged-feeling…desperately he shoved his foot down at it. The water was so cold that his legs were already numb, but his shoe hit a solid something.

And then another something. Rocks. He wedged himself against them, heedless of the massively booming pain in his head and arm, until he was braced between two boulders against the icy, rushing current.

It wanted to try to shove him off. But for now at least he wasn't inhaling ice-cold salt water, which to him was one hundred percent solid improvement.

He was still about chest-deep in icy slush, though, or that was what it felt like. So something else would have to be tried soon. But not yet.

No. Absolutely not now, he thought, gazing in frozen terror at the green maelstrom between himself and the shore. It looked to be only about fifty yards or so, but that was plenty. Later,
maybe, he would surrender his grip on the rocks. When the water got warmer.

Or when hell froze over, whichever came first. As he thought this, one of the bright orange life jackets floated by, wrapped around the little kid. She was howling her guts out.

Anthony reached out and, balancing himself precariously for an instant, grabbed the life jacket. Sorry, kid, he thought as he fumbled one-handed with the straps. But they were tied too many times for him to undo them with only one hand, and if he let go of the rock with his left hand he would get washed off.

And his knife was missing, he realized when he felt in his pocket for it. Opening her eyes, the kid glared balefully at him as if she knew what he'd been thinking, and howled even louder. Shut up, he wanted to say. But he couldn't, his teeth chattering so hard and uncontrollably he thought they might break off.

And then he had it: He could use the life-jacket-wrapped kid as a float. Hold her out in front of himself, kick his legs hard, make it to shore that way. Because it was a cinch he wasn't going to last much longer here, wasn't it?

As for the kid, well, it probably wouldn't be good for her. Too bad; he liked her, and ordinarily he wouldn't do anything deliberately to harm her. He wasn't that kind of person; he'd shown that, hadn't he, with the other girl back in the woods?

By not shooting her. By risking his own neck in generously giving her a chance to survive. Because that's the kind of guy he was, bighearted to a fault, not like the others he'd been in juvie with. Only it was push-comes-to-shove time now, and at the end of all this, he meant to be the one still shoving.

Satisfied with his ethical situation, Anthony gripped the life jacket with the child in it and prepared to push off. But a familiar voice stopped him.

"Freakin’ punk," said Marky Turning his head very slowly,
Anthony stared in disbelief. Only a dozen feet away, Marky clung one-handed to a stout steel cable over his head. Dimly, Anthony recalled seeing the cable from up on the bluffs; it ran from the shore to a rock jutting up behind him.

Next, the tackle box that had been in the boat came bobbing by, its lid hanging open. As Anthony watched, a wave swamped it.

"Thought I was dead, huh? You wish," said Marky bitterly. Another wave drenched him, tossing him around in the water, but he didn't let go of the cable. Marky's mouth was bleeding, and his eyes were like ripe plums, purple and swollen.

But he could still see out of them. Or well enough anyway to be aiming his .38 at Anthony's head. Marky must've snatched it from the tackle box before the box sank. Just my luck, Anthony thought.

"Get over here, you punk," said Marky through a mouthful of broken teeth. "Bring that kid, too. And when you get here, just grab on this way…"

As well as he could, Marky angled his head up at the stout steel cable running tautly over his head, his hand wrapped around it so tightly that it might as well have been welded there. Maybe Marky really was some kind of a weird creature, Anthony thought, the kind you could only kill by putting a stake through its heart.

Or a bullet in its head. Slowly he began making his way over the submerged rocks, towing the floating kid by one of the life jacket straps. A few times he actually did find himself swimming, the kid yelling and choking out there ahead of him.