Christine (64 page)

"Negative perspiration," Arnie said. He finished his beer, and LeBay tossed it into the back seat. "Another dead soldier."

"Yeah," I said. "Happy New Year, Arnie." I fumbled for the doorhandle and opened it. I wondered if I could get out, if my trembling arms would support the crutches.

LeBay was looking at me, grinning. "Just stay on my side, Dennis," he said. "You know what happens to shitters who don't."

"Yes," I whispered. I knew, all right.

I got my crutches out and heaved myself up onto them, careless of any ice that might be underneath. They held me. And once out, the world underwent a swimming, twisting change. Lights came on—but of course, they had been there all along. My family had moved into Mapleway Estates in June of 1959, the year before I was born.

We still lived here, but the area had stopped being known as Mapleway Estates by 1963 or '64 at the latest.

Out of the car, I was looking at my own house on my own perfectly normal street—just another part of Libertyville, Pa. I looked back at Arnie, half-expecting to see LeBay again, taxi-driver from hell with his benighted cargo of the long-dead.

But it was only Arnie, wearing his high school jacket with his name sewn over the left breast, Arnie looking too pale and too alone, Arnie with a can of beer propped against his crotch.

"Good night, man."

"Goodnight," I said. "Be careful going home. You don't want to get picked up."

"I won't," he said. "You take care, Dennis."

"I will."

I shut the door. My horror had changed to a deep and terrible sorrow—it was as if he had been buried. Buried alive. I watched Christine pull away from the curb and head off down the street. I watched until she turned the corner and disappeared from sight. Then I started up the walk to the house. The walk was clear. My dad had scattered most of a ten-pound bag of Halite over it with me in mind.

I was three-quarters of the way to the door when a grayness seemed to drift over me like smoke and I had to stop and put my head down and try to hold onto myself. I could faint out here, I thought dimly, and then freeze to death on my own front walk where once Arnie and I had played hopscotch and jacks and statue-tag.

At last, little by little, the grayness started to clear. I felt an arm around my waist. It was Dad in his bathrobe and slippers.

"Dennis, are you okay?"

Was I okay? I had been driven home by a corpse.

"Yeah," I said. "Got a little dizzy. Let's get in. You'll freeze your butt off."

He walked up the steps with me, his arm still circling my waist. I was glad to have it.

"Is Mom still up?" I asked.

"No—she saw the New Year in, and then she and Ellie went to bed. Are you drunk, Dennis?"

"No."

"You don't look good," he said, slamming the door behind us.

I uttered a crazy little shriek of laughter, and things went gray again… but only briefly this time. When I came back, he was looking at me with tight concern.

"What happened over there?"

"Dad—"

"Dennis, you talk to me!"

"Dad, I can't."

"What
is
it with him? What's wrong with him, Dennis?"

I only shook my head, and it wasn't just the craziness of it, or fear for myself. Now I was afraid for all of them—my dad, my mom, Elaine, Leigh's folks. Coldly and sanely afraid.

Just stay on my side, Dennis. You know what happens to shitters who don't.

Had I really heard that?

Or had it been in my mind only?

My father was still looking at me.

"I
can't.
"

"All right," he said. "For now. I guess. But I need to know one thing, Dennis, and I want you to tell me. Do you have any reason to believe that Arnie was involved some way with Darnell's death, and the deaths of those boys?"

I thought of LeBay's rotting, grinning face, the flat pants poked up by something that could only have been bones.

"No," I said, and that was almost the truth. "Not Arnie."

"All right," he said. "You want a hand up the stairs?"

"I can make it okay. You go to bed yourself, Dad."

"Yeah. I'm going to. Happy New Year, Dennis—and if you want to tell me, I'm still here."

"Nothing to tell," I said.

Nothing I
could
tell.

"Somehow," he said, "I doubt that."

I went up and got into bed and left the light on and didn't sleep at all. It was the longest night of my life, and several times I thought of getting up and going in with my mom and dad, the way I had done when I was small. Once I actually caught myself getting out of bed and groping for my crutches. I lay back down again. I was afraid for all of them, yes, right. But that wasn't the worst. Not anymore.

I was afraid of losing my mind. That was the worst.

The sun was just poking over the horizon when I finally dropped off and dozed uneasily for three or four hours. And when I woke up, my mind had already begun trying to heal itself with unreality. My problem was that I could simply no longer afford to listen to that lulling song. The line was blurred for good.

46 GEORGE LEBAY AGAIN

That fateful night the car was stalled

Upon the railroad track,

I pulled you out and you were safe

But you went running back…

— Mark Dinning

On Friday the fifth of January I got a postcard from Richard McCandless, secretary of the Libertyville American Legion Post. Written on the back in smudgy pencil was George LeBay's home address in Paradise Falls, Ohio. I carried the card around in my hip pocket most of the day, taking it out occasionally and looking at it. I didn't want to call him; I didn't want to talk to him about his crazy brother Roland again; I didn't want this crazy business to go any further at all.

That evening my father and mother went out to the Monroeville Mall with Ellie, who wanted to spend some of her Christmas money on a new pair of downhill skis. Half an hour after they were gone, I picked up the telephone and propped McCandless's postcard up in front of me. A call to Ohio directory assistance placed Paradise Falls in area code 513—western Ohio. After a pause for thought I called directory assistance again and got LeBay's number. I jotted it on the card, paused for thought again—a long pause, this time—and then picked up the phone a third time. I dialed half of LeBay's number and then hung up.
Fuck it
, I thought, full of a nervous resentment I could not recall ever feeling before.
Enough is enough, so fuck it, I'm not calling him. I'm done with it, I wash my hands of the whole crappy mess. Let him go to hell in his own handcar. Fuck it.

"Fuck it," I whispered, and got out of there before my conscience could begin to bore into me again. I went upstairs, took a sponge bath, and then turned in. I was soundly asleep before Ellie and my folks came back in, and I slept long and well that night. A good thing, because it was a long time before I slept that well again. A very long time.

While I slept, someone—
something
—killed Rudolph Junkins of the Pennsylvania State Police. It was in the paper when I got up next morning. DARNELL INVESTIGATOR MURDERED NEAR BLAIRSVILLE, the headline shouted.

My father was upstairs taking a shower; Ellie and two of her friends out on the porch, giggling and cawing over a game of Monopoly; my mother working on one of her stories in the sewing room. I was at the table by myself, stunned and scared. It occurred to me that Leigh and her family were going to be back from California tomorrow, school would start again the day after, and unless Arnie (or LeBay) changed his mind, she would be actively pursued.

I slowly pushed away the eggs I had scrambled for myself. I no longer wanted them. Last night it had seemed possible to push away the whole ominous and inexplicable business of Christine as easily as I'd just pushed away my breakfast. Now I wondered how I could have been so naive.

Junkins was the man Arnie had mentioned New Year's Eve. I couldn't even kid myself that it hadn't been. The paper said he had been the man in charge of Pennsylvania's part of the Will Darnell investigation, and it hinted that some shadowy crime organization had been behind the murder. The Southern Mob, Arnie would have said. Or the crazy Colombians.

I thought differently.

Junkins's car had been driven off a lonely country road and battered to so much senseless wreckage

(That goddam Junkins is still after me full steam ahead; he better watch out or somebody might just junk him… Just stay on my side, Dennis. You know what happens to shitters who don't)

with Junkins still inside it.

When Repperton and his friends were killed, Arnie had been in Philly with the chess club. When Darnell was killed, be was in Ligonier with his parents, visiting relatives. Cast-iron alibis. I thought he would have another for Junkins. Seven—seven deaths now, and they formed a deadly ring around Arnie Cunningham and Christine. The police could surely see that; not even a blind man could miss such an explicit chain of motivation. But the paper didn't say that anyone was "aiding the police in their enquiries", as the British so delicately put it.

Of course, the police are not in the habit of just handing everything they know over to the newspapers. I knew that, but every instinct I had told me that the state cops weren't seriously investigating Arnie in connection with this latest murder by automobile.

He was in the clear.

What had Junkins seen behind him on that country road outside of Blairsville? A red and white car, I thought. Maybe empty, maybe driven by a corpse.

A goose ran squawking over my grave and my arms broke in cold bumps.

Seven people dead.

It had to end. If for no other reason than because maybe killing gets to be a habit. If Michael and Regina wouldn't go along with Arnie's crazy California plans, either of them or both of them might be next. Suppose he walked up to Leigh in study hall period three next Tuesday and asked her to marry him and Leigh simply said no? What might she see idling at the curb when she got home that afternoon?

Jesus Christ, I was scared.

My mother poked her head in. "Dennis, you're not eating."

I looked up. "I got reading the paper. Guess I'm not that hungry, Mom."

"You have to eat right or you're not going to get well. Want me to make you oatmeal?"

My stomach churned at the thought, but I smiled as I shook my head. "No—but I'll eat a big lunch."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

"Denny, do you feel okay? You've looked so tired and peaked lately."

"I'm fine, Mom." I widened my smile to show her how fine I was, and then I thought of her getting out of her blue Reliant-K at the Monroeville Mall, and two rows back was a white-over-red car, idling. In my mind's eye I saw her walk in front of it, purse over her arm, saw Christine's transmission lever suddenly drop into DRIVE—

"Are you sure? It's not your leg bothering you, is it?"

"No."

"Have you taken your vitamins?"

"Yes."

"And your rosehips?"

I burst out laughing. She looked irritated for a moment, then smiled. "Ye're a sassbox, Dennis Guilder," she said in her best Irish accent (which is pretty good, since her mom came from the auld sod), "and there's no kivver to ye." She went back to the sewing room, and in a moment the irregular bursts of her typewriter began again.

I picked up the newspaper and looked at the photo of Junkins's twisted auto. DEATH CAR, the caption beneath read.

Try this
, I thought:
Junkins is interested in a lot more than finding out who sold illegal fireworks and cigarettes to Will Darnell. Junkins is a state detective, and state detectives work on more than one case at a time. He could have been trying to find out who killed Moochie Welch. Or he could have been
—

I crutched over to the sewing room and knocked.

"Yes?"

"Sorry to bother you, Mom

"Don't be silly, Dennis."

"Are you going downtown today?"

"I might be. Why?"

"I'd like to go to the library."

By three o'clock that Saturday afternoon it had begun to snow again. I had a slight headache from staring into the microfilm reader, but I had what I wanted. My hunch had been on the money—not that it had been any great intuitive leap.

Junkins had been in charge of the hit-and-run that had killed Moochie Welch, all right… and he had also been in charge of investigating what had happened to Repperton, Trelawney, and Bobby Stanton. He'd have to be one dumb cop not to read Arnie's name between the lines of what was happening.

I leaned back in the chair, snapped off the reader, and closed my eyes. I tried to make myself be Junkins for a minute. He suspects Arnie of being involved with the murders. Not doing them, but involved somehow. Does he suspect Christine? Maybe he does. On the TV detective shows, they're always great at identifying guns, typewriters used to write ransom notes, and cars involved in hit-and-runs. Flakes and scrapes of paint, maybe…

Then the Darnell bust looms up. For Junkins, that's nothing but great. The garage will be closed and everything in it impounded. Maybe Junkins suspects…

What?

I worked harder at imagining. I'm a cop. I believe in legitimate answers, sane answers, routine answers. So what do I suspect? After a moment, it came.

An accomplice, of course. I suspect an accomplice. It has to be an accomplice. Nobody in his right mind would suspect that the car was doing it herself. So…?

So after the garage is closed, Junkins brings in the best technicians and lab men he can lay his hands on. They go over Christine from stem to stern, looking for evidence of what has happened. Reasoning as Junkins would reason trying to, anyway—I think that there has to be some evidence. Hitting a human body is not like hitting a feather pillow. Hitting the crash barrier out at Squantic Hills is not like hitting a feather pillow, either.

So what do they find, these experts in vehicular homicide?

Nothing.

They find no dents, no touch-up repainting, no blood stains. They find no embedded brown paint-flakes from the Squantic Hills road barrier that was broken off. In short, Junkins finds absolutely no evidence that Christine was used in either crime. Now jump ahead to Darnell's murder. Does Junkins hustle over to the garage the next day to check on Christine? I would, if it was me. The side of a house isn't a feather pillow either, and a car that has just crashed through one must have sustained major damage, damage that simply couldn't have been repaired overnight. And when he gets there, what does he find?