Firestarter (50 page)

“Very good.”

He got up and left the study. As he did so, his hand stole to his breast pocket and felt the note there again.

Charlie lay on her bed fifteen minutes after Cap left, her mind in a total whirl of dismay, fear, and confused speculation. She literally didn't know what to think.

He had come at quarter of five, half an hour ago, and had introduced himself as Captain Hollister (“but please just call me Cap; everyone does”). He had a kindly, shrewd face that reminded her a little of the illustrations in
The Wind in the Willows
. It was a face she had seen somewhere recently, but she hadn't been able to place it until Cap jogged her memory. It had been he who had taken her back to her rooms after the first test, when the man in the white suit had bolted, leaving the door open. She had been so much in a fog of shock, guilt, and—yes—exhilarated triumph that it was really no wonder she hadn't been able to place his face. Probably she could have been escorted back to her apartment by Gene Simmons of Kiss without noticing it.

He talked in a smooth, convincing way that she immediately mistrusted.

He told her Hockstetter was concerned because she had declared the testing at an end until she saw her father. Charlie agreed that was so and would say no more, maintaining a stubborn silence … mostly out of fear. If you discussed your reasons for things with a smooth talker like this Cap, he would strip those reasons away one by one until it seemed that black was white and white black. The bare demand was better. Safer.

But he had surprised her.

“If that's the way you feel, okay,” he had said. The expression of surprise on her face must have been slightly comical, because he chuckled. “It will take a bit of arranging, but—”

At the words “a bit of arranging,” her face closed up again. “No more fires,” she said. “No more tests. Even if it takes you ten years to ‘arrange' it.”

“Oh, I don't think it will take that long,” he had said, not offended. “It's just that I have people to answer to, Charlie. And a place like this runs on paperwork. But you don't have to light so much as a candle while I'm setting it up.”

“Good,” she said stonily, not believing him, not believing he was going to set anything up. “Because I won't.”

“I think I ought to be able to arrange it … by Wednesday. Yes, by Wednesday, for sure.”

He had fallen suddenly silent. His head cocked slightly, as if he were listening to something just a bit too high-pitched for her to hear. Charlie looked at him, puzzled, was about to ask if he was all right, and then closed her mouth with a snap. There was something … something almost familiar about the way he was sitting.

“Do you really think I could see him on Wednesday?” she asked timidly.

“Yes, I think so,” Cap said. He shifted in his chair and sighed heavily. His eye caught hers and he smiled a puzzled little smile … also familiar. Apropos of nothing at all, he said: “Your dad plays a mean game of golf, I hear.”

Charlie blinked. So far as she knew, her father had never touched a golf club in his life. She got ready to say so … and then it came together in her mind and a dizzying burst of bewildered excitement ran through her.

(Mr. Merle! He's like Mr. Merle!)

Mr. Merle had been one of Daddy's executives when they were in New York. Just a little man with light-blond hair and pink-rimmed glasses and a sweet, shy smile. He had come to get more confidence, like the rest of them. He worked in an insurance company or a bank or something. And Daddy had been very worried about Mr. Merle for a while. It was a “rick-o-shay.” It came from using the push. It had something to do with a story Mr. Merle had read once. The push Daddy used to give Mr. Merle more confidence made him remember that story in a bad way, a way that was making him sick. Daddy said the “rick-o-shay” came from that story and it was bouncing around in Mr. Merle's head like a tennis ball, only instead of finally stopping the way a bouncing tennis ball would, the memory of that story would get stronger and stronger until it made Mr. Merle very sick. Only Charlie had got the idea that Daddy was afraid it might do more than make Mr. Merle sick; he was afraid it might kill him. So he had kept Mr. Merle after the others left one night and pushed him into believing he had never read that story at all. And after that, Mr. Merle was all right. Daddy told her once that he hoped Mr. Merle would never go to see a movie called
The Deer Hunter,
but he didn't explain why.

But before Daddy fixed him up, Mr. Merle had looked like Cap did now.

She was suddenly positive that her father had pushed this man, and the excitement in her was like a tornado. After hearing nothing about him except for the sort of general reports John sometimes brought her, after not seeing him or knowing where he was, it was in a strange way as if her father were suddenly in this room with her, telling her it was all right and that he was near.

Cap suddenly stood up. “Well, I'll be going now. But I'll be seeing you, Charlie. And don't worry.”

She wanted to tell him not to go, to tell her about her dad, where he was, if he was okay … but her tongue was rooted to the bottom of her mouth.

Cap went to the door, then paused. “Oh, almost forgot.” He crossed the room to her, took a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket, and handed it to her. She took it numbly, looked at it, and put it in her robe pocket. “And when you're out riding that horse, you watch out for snakes,” he said confidentially. “If a horse sees a snake, he is going to bolt. Every time. Hell—”

He broke off, raised a hand to his temple, and rubbed it. For a moment, he looked old and distracted. Then he shook his head a little, as if dismissing the thought. He bid her good-bye and left.

Charlie stood there for a long moment after he was gone. Then she took out the note, unfolded it, read what was written there and everything changed.

Charlie, love—

First thing: When you finish reading this, flush it down the toilet, okay?

Second thing: If everything goes the way I'm planning—the way I hope—we'll be out of here next Wednesday. The man who gave you this note is on our team, although he doesn't know he is … get it?

Third thing: I want you to be in the stables on Wednesday afternoon at one o'clock. I don't care how you do it—make another fire for them if that's what it takes. But be there.

Fourth, most important thing:
Don't trust this man John Rainbird
. This may upset you. I know you have trusted him. But he is a very dangerous man, Charlie. No way anyone's going to blame you for your trust in him—Hollister says he has been convincing enough to win an Academy Award. But know this; he was in charge of the men who took us prisoner at Granther's place. I hope this doesn't upset you too much, but knowing how you are, it probably will. It's no fun to find out that someone has been using you for his own purposes. Listen, Charlie: if Rainbird comes around—and he probably will—it is
very important
for him to think your feelings toward him haven't changed. He will be out of our way on Wednesday afternoon.

We are going to Los Angeles or Chicago, Charlie, and I think I know a way to arrange a press conference for us. I have an old friend named Quincey I'm counting on to help us, and I believe—I must believe—that he will come through for us if I can get in touch with him. A press conference would mean that the whole country would know about us. They may still want to keep us someplace, but we can be together. I hope you still want that as much as I do.

This wouldn't be so bad except that they want you to make fires for all the wrong reasons. If you have any doubts at all about running again, remember it is for the last time … and that it is what your mother would have wanted.

I miss you, Charlie, and love you lots.

Dad

John?

John in charge of the men that shot her and her father with tranquilizer darts?

John?

She rolled her head from side to side. The feeling of desolation in her, the heartbreak, seemed too great to be contained. There was no answer to this cruel dilemma. If she believed her father, she had to believe that John had been tricking her all along only to get her to agree to their tests. If
she continued to believe in John, then the note she had crumpled and flushed down the toilet was a lie with her father's name signed to it. Either way, the hurt, the
cost,
was enormous. Was this what being grownup was about? Dealing with that hurt? That cost? If it was, she hoped she would die young.

She remembered looking up from Necromancer that first time and seeing John's smile … something in that smile that she didn't like. She remembered that she had never got any real feeling from him, as if he were closed off, or … or …

She tried to shunt the thought aside.

(or dead inside)

but it would not be shunted.

But he wasn't
like
that. He
wasn't
. His terror in the blackout. His story about what those Cong had done to him. Could that be a lie? Could it, with the ruined map of his face to back up the tale?

Her head went back and forth on the pillow, back and forth, back and forth, in an endless gesture of negation. She did not want to think about it, did not, did not.

But couldn't help it.

Suppose … suppose they had made the blackout happen? Or suppose it had just happened …
and he had used it?

(NO! NO! NO! NO!)

And yet her mind was now out of her conscious control, and it circled this maddening, horrifying patch of nettles with a kind of inexorable, cold determination. She was a bright girl, and she handled her chain of logic carefully, one bead at a time, telling it as a bitter penitent must tell the terrible beads of utter confession and surrender.

She remembered a TV show she had seen once, it had been on
Starsky and Hutch
. They put this cop into jail in the same cell with this bad guy who knew all about a robbery. They had called the cop pretending to be a jailbird a “ringer.”

Was John Rainbird a ringer?

Her father said he was. And why would her father lie to her?

Who do you believe in? John or Daddy? Daddy or John?

No, no, no, her mind repeated steadily, monotonously … and to no effect. She was caught in a torture of doubt that no eight-year-old girl should have to stand, and when sleep came, the dream came with it. Only this time she saw the face of the silhouette, which stood to block the light.

“All right, what is it?” Hockstetter asked grumpily.

His tone indicated that it had better be pretty goddam good. He had been home watching James Bond on the Sunday Night Movie when the phone rang and a voice told him that they had a potential problem with the little girl. Over an open line, Hockstetter didn't dare ask what the problem was. He just went as he was, in a pair of paint-splattered jeans and a tennis shirt.

He had come frightened, chewing a Rolaid to combat the boil of sour acid in his stomach. He had kissed his wife good-bye, answering her raised eyebrows by saying it was a slight problem with some of the equipment and he would be right back. He wondered what she would say if she knew the “slight problem” could kill him at any moment.

Standing here now, looking into the ghostly infrared monitor they used to watch Charlie when the lights were out, he wished again that this was over and the little girl out of the way. He had never bargained for this when the whole thing was just an academic problem outlined in a series of blue folders. The truth was the burning cinderblock wall; the truth was spot temperatures of thirty thousand degrees or more; the truth was Brad Hyuck talking about whatever forces fired the engine of the universe; and the truth was that he was very scared. He felt as if he were sitting on top of an unstable nuclear reactor.

The man on duty, Neary, swung around when Hockstetter came in. “Cap came down to visit her around five,” he said. “She turned her nose up at supper. Went to bed early.”

Hockstetter looked into the monitor. Charlie was tossing restlessly on top of her bed, fully dressed. “She looks like maybe she's having a nightmare.”

“One, or a whole series of them,” Neary said grimly. “I called because the temperature in there has gone up three degrees in the last hour.”

“That's not much.”

“It is when a room's temperature-controlled the way that one is. Not much doubt that she's doing it.”

Hockstetter considered this, biting on a knuckle.

“I think someone should go in there and wake her up,” Neary said, finally drifting down to the bottom line.

“Is that what you got me down here for?” Hockstetter cried. “To wake up a kid and give her a glass of warm milk?”

“I didn't want to exceed my authority,” Neary said stonily.

“No,” Hockstetter said, and had to bite down on the rest of the words. The little girl would have to be wakened if the temperature went much higher, and there was always a chance that if she was frightened enough, she might strike out at the first person she saw upon waking. After all, they had been busy removing the checks and balances on her pyrokinetic ability and had been quite successful.

“Where's Rainbird?” he asked.

Neary shrugged. “Whipping his weasel in Winnipeg, for all I know. But as far as she's concerned, he's off duty. I think she'd be pretty suspicious if he showed up n—”

The digital thermometer inset on Neary's control board flicked over another degree, hesitated, and then flicked over two more in quick succession.

“Somebody's
got
to go in there,” Neary said, and now his voice was a bit unsteady. “It's seventy-four in there now. What if she blows sky-high?”