Forests of the Night (30 page)

“I need to go home,” Gracey said. “I need to go back to Miami. Like right away. It's a career thing.”

Since last night at the motel, Lucy had barely said a word and she didn't say one now. Seeing Jacob shot down had switched her off.

After they got away from the motel, they dumped the Lincoln at the casino parking lot and spent two hours hiking back to the campsite, Lucy dead silent the whole time. Walking like a zombie on Thorazine. Which gave Gracey a serious case of the creeps.

Sure, it was terrible seeing Jacob lying there on the pavement with bullet holes. Sure, it had freaked her out, too, and it was still making her sad, but Lucy, man, Lucy was somewhere else. Moving around like she was a mile underwater, sluggish and sleepy.

“Maybe Jacob's not dead. Maybe he survived,” Gracey said. “It happens, you know.”

Lucy rose up on an elbow and looked at Gracey. Her eyes were red, her face drained, the way people got when they ran out of feelings, cried themselves empty. Gracey had seen that same face in the mirror a few times and recognized it right off.

“I've seen it happen,” Gracey said. “A guy gets shot, three, four times, he survives.”

“Where'd you see that?” Lucy Panther said. “In the movies?”

“The movies are as real as anything else.”

“Sure they are.”

Lucy closed her eyes and pressed her head back into the pillow.

“I'm ready to go,” Gracey said. “What're we waiting for? You said you were taking me back to my parents. So let's go.”

But Lucy just lay on her bunk, taking breath after breath but not saying anything else. Catatonic. Gracey had been that way a few times and knew how it felt. Nothing you wanted to do. Nobody you wanted to see or talk to.

In her head Steven was quiet, too. But not Joan Crawford. She was yakking about
Sudden Fear
, that movie she did with Jack Palance. In the film her character was a rich heiress and she married Palance, then found out he was going to murder her for her money. She should've known better. Anybody could look at the bone structure of Palance's face and know he was a killer. All those sharp angles. My God, you could slice steel cable with those cheekbones. But no, Joan fell for him because the script said so. She had to act like she was in love with the troll for half the movie. Play kissy face.

But if Gracey wanted to learn something, really learn something important about acting, she should look at the scene where Joan hears on a tape recorder Jack Palance's plot to kill her. She's alone in her room, hearing her lover's voice plotting her murder. No dialogue, just his recorded voice and Joan reacting. Look at my face, the way I go through about ten octaves of emotions. Look at it, Gracey. Study it. What I did with my eyes and mouth. Play that over and over and analyze it, girl. And was I naked one time in that movie? No, sir. I was in my nightgown, sure. I was in robes and silky things but never any flesh. And tell me how sexy I was. Get your big-shot director to take a look at that movie, why don't you? See if I wasn't sexy as hell.

Joan got quiet, and at the same moment Lucy popped straight up in the bunk. Then Gracey heard what Lucy had heard: a car coming up the drive, then its engine shutting off. Gracey rolled over on her cot and peeked out the tiny window high up on the mobile home. A porthole, like.

“Aw, shit,” Lucy said. “Christ Almighty.”

A man was climbing out of a cop car. It was a tall, gawky guy with black
hair and a big jaw and a blue policeman's uniform with gold all over it. He walked over and stood by their barbecue pit, looking at the camper, just standing there like a gunslinger out in the middle of the street waiting for the other guy to show. That's the look he had.

“Get on the floor. Face down, flat,” Lucy barked at her. “Do it, don't ask why. Get the hell on the floor.”

Gracey got on the floor.

Snatching her pistol, Lucy duckwalked toward the front seat, reached out, and touched the keys hanging from the ignition. Then drew her hand back, changing her mind.

On Lucy's cot the cell phone rang. It rang and rang, but Lucy just stayed crouched behind the bucket seat, peeking out the windshield at the man standing there. Gracey raised herself up so she could see. This was something she could use later. This was one of those high-octane moments Mr. Underwood was always raving about. Gracey could feel it.

But that damn Joan Crawford kept jabbering about another movie of hers, a part she'd played, not an Indian, but a disfigured woman with a face so scarred up that she hated everybody she came in contact with. Bitter about how she looked, taking it out on everybody else because of how ugly her face was. And the wardrobe in that one, hell, it was still with the deep cleavage, but what were you going to do? You couldn't fight every little thing.

Gracey got up, scooted over to the bed, and picked up the cell phone and pushed the On button. Thinking maybe it was Jacob, calling from the hospital, letting them know he was still alive.

“Hello?”

Lucy hissed and waved for her to get down.

“Lucy?” It was some woman on the line.

“Lucy can't come to the phone right now. Can I take a message?”

The woman was silent for a second, then said, “Who's this?”

“I'm Gracey. I'm visiting from out of town.”

She said she wanted to talk to Lucy, sounding sleepy and weird, the phone cutting out, part of her sentence missing in the static.

“You're breaking up,” Gracey said.

“Get the hell down on the floor,” Lucy screamed at her. “Do it now.”

Flat on the floor again, on her tummy, Gracey kept the phone at her ear, but the woman's voice was going in and out, Gracey catching a word here and there, that was about it. Gracey twisted around to see what Lucy was doing. She was in the driver's seat, turning the key, the motor coming to life but not sounding good, a sputter, a knock, like it was running out of gas before it even got going.

Gracey clicked off the phone and tossed it onto the cot.

“Stay down.” Lucy turned, gave Gracey a quick look, then slid the pistol down the floor toward her. “Use this if you have to. Whatever you do, don't let this guy get you. He comes within ten feet, start shooting. Ten feet, you hear me?”

Lucy shoved the gearshift and hit the gas, and the camper lurched forward. It bumped over a rut and dishes came spilling down. Gracey covered her head with her arms and stayed down. Heard glass breaking, and then her hair was showered with something. There was a gunshot and Gracey looked at the pistol in her hand, thinking it'd gone off, but it hadn't because there was another gunshot and more stuff sprinkled her head and itched against her neck.

She felt back there and it was wood chips or something and she turned her head a little and saw a big gash in the fiberboard next to her head and looked the other way and saw the rip in the metal side of the camper, like about two inches above her head. Big hole you could put your hand through.

“Hold on!”

Gracey lifted her head to see out the windshield, shattered now, but she could see the roof of the police car coming up fast, Lucy aiming the camper at its side and holding the gas down and crashing hard into the truck and driving it sideways into bushes and trees, then ramming the shifter into reverse, backing, and swinging the big, top-heavy thing to the left.

Woo-woo, she heard in her head. One of the voices. Could've been any of them. Woo-woo, hang on tight. Woo-woo.

The camper was weaving down a gravel road, then it started slowing down, slower and slower. That wasn't right.

Gracey looked up from the floor and saw Lucy slumped sideways, still holding on to the wheel, but not steering anymore. Gracey could see trees coming at them through the windshield, she scrambled up there and bent
down beside Lucy and took over the wheel. A ditch coming, too, ten feet ahead, deeper than a regular ditch, more like a valley.

She was frozen, just holding on to the wheel, until Barbara Stanwyck said, Do it, be brave, make your mark. You're too young to die, kid. Do it.

Gracey yanked the wheel to the right and got the camper back on the gravel. She leaned over Lucy and looked into the big rearview mirror, and she couldn't see the man anymore, so she figured he was running to his car to see how bad it was smashed up.

Lucy looked at her, eyes groggy but open. Blood ran down her neck. Gracey's breakfast started to back up into her throat, the eggs, the toast.

“Can you drive this thing?” Lucy crowded past her and dropped into the passenger's seat, holding the wheel until Gracey was in the driver's seat and got her hands set and found the accelerator and got them going somewhere, she wasn't sure where, Lucy telling her, “The left coming up, yeah, this one, here, now look for the first right, a highway, be careful. It's busy.” Her voice fading on every word.

Talk about blood, Joan said, you should've seen me when I went under the knife, and lo and behold the surgeon performed a miracle and I came out of the anesthesia and I was beautiful, and it completely changed me, I was well for the first time in my life and I started being good to people, loving and kind. Then, Joan's voice got sarcastic and she said, best acting job of my career, hell, I only had to be sympathetic for the last five minutes of the film.

Gracey got them to the edge of the highway, lots of cars going past.

“Which way?”

She looked over and Lucy had closed her eyes, but she got her hand up and waved to the left, so that's which way Gracey turned, going somewhere, she didn't know where. But she had them rolling along, settling into the stream of traffic and that seemed good enough for now.

Woo-woo, somebody said. Sounded like Steven. Blood and bullets and car crashes and chases. Woo-woo.

 

Nancy Feather was dialing Lucy's number again. Using her thumb. Her head was foggy, eyes misting over. Steering her little Volkswagen down the
twisting highway, going fast on that familiar road, knowing every switchback, every pothole, every damn passing lane.

But her heart wasn't firing on all cylinders. Too fast, too irregular. Mind whirling. Who could she call for help? Who would believe her? Farris Tribue's dogs killed a young woman. Farris Tribue, the sheriff for the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation. Farris Tribue, the way he'd toyed with her, mocked her. That remark about bonbons. She was hearing it all again, his snotty, bigoted tone. Treating her like a fat dumb squaw. She got the numbers punched in, and it was the wrong number, some old woman answering, wanting to talk to Nancy, ask who she was, shoot the breeze, and Nancy apologized to the woman and said she had to go and started dialing again, focused on the keypad now so she got it right and missing that Z turn, just going straight out over the edge, no guardrail, no trees, nothing but free fall.

The car tilted forward so Nancy saw straight out the windshield, straight down into the river valley, a man down there fishing, casting his line, and she was aiming right for him, and Nancy tried turning the steering wheel, but of course that did nothing. Nothing at all. It was all so quick she didn't even have time to scream.

 

A few miles down the highway, Lucy pointed out a muddy side road and told Gracey to pull off. With gauze and adhesive tape from the first-aid kit, Gracey bandaged Lucy's wounded ear. The bullet had torn off most of her earlobe and scraped her neck, but it wasn't like she was going to die or anything.

“Who was that guy shooting at us?”

“The same man who killed Jacob.”

“Why'd he want to kill you?”

When the bandaging was done, Lucy traded places with her and got behind the wheel and started the camper and headed back out to the highway.

“Why'd he want to kill you, Lucy?”

“He didn't want to kill me.”

“He sure acted like it.”

“He was after you,” Lucy said.

“Me? What'd I do?”

“Nothing,” said Lucy. “Absolutely nothing.”

“I must've done something. People don't try to kill you for no reason. There's got to be a motivation. That's how it works.”

Lucy looked over and her mouth softened a little, almost a smile.

“You're on a list,” Lucy said. “You and Jacob and your father.”

“What list?” Gracey leaned forward to see Lucy's face.

“I said too much already. You're just a kid.”

“If I'm going to get shot at, I should know what's going on. What list?”

Lucy stopped for a red light. They were getting closer to town.

While they waited, Lucy took a long look at her. The way her mother did sometimes when she was trying to gauge if Gracey could be trusted, or if she was old enough to handle something.

“This man wants to murder you because of who your father is. Like they already murdered your grandmother and your grandfather before that.”

“My grandmother? Diana? She's dead? When?”

Lucy sighed.

“This man,” she said. “Jacob tried to tell your dad about him, so maybe Parker could help, but that didn't pan out. That's as much as I can tell you.”

Steven Spielberg was talking to her again in his low-key, serious way. The most amazing thing. He was officially offering her a part. Not the lead, of course, she was too young for that, too inexperienced, but he'd decided she was ready for a supporting role.

The gunfire decided it for him, the incident in the camper. The way she'd acted, so brave, talking to the woman on the phone when all that craziness was going on around her. He was excited. Did you see Melanie Griffith in
Night Moves
?

Of course she'd seen it, Steven. She'd told him that once before and they'd talked about it for hours, didn't he remember? Gene Hackman, he's a football player turned private eye. Yeah, yeah, Steven was off again. It was Melanie's first movie. You could tell she was going to be a star—that mousy voice, that look, those eyes.