Hard Rain (34 page)

No thoughts, no commands passed through Jessie's consciousness when she saw that. One moment she was watching, the next she was behind the wheel of Zyzmchuk's old car, turning the key.

The Blazer shot across the barnyard, straight at the real estate man. Red-gold gleamed at Jessie as he saw her coming. He jumped sideways. The fender clipped the gas can from his hand. He fell. Jessie braked, turned at the far side of the yard and started back. The sirens were very loud. Mr. Mickey was dragging the real estate man to his feet. He glanced at Zyzmchuk, lying on the ground, glanced at the approaching car, then threw the real estate man over his shoulder and loped into the woods behind the barn.

Zyzmchuk sat up. Jessie stopped the car and got out. She was going toward him when a loud crack came from the house, as though a giant bone had snapped in two. Enormous flames rose through the roof, unfurling like red-gold sails high into the evening sky. An invisible, scorching wave swept over the yard.

The fire roared.

Glass shattered.

And someone screamed. Someone in the house.

Jessie looked up. A face appeared in the window above the kitchen. An eyeless face.

“Disco,” Jessie shouted, running under the window. The fire breathed its hot breath on her skin.

Disco bent his head down in her direction. The movement was unrushed, mechanical, as though he were in a trance. Then he screamed again, right at her, a shriek that cut through the noise of the fire and the sirens and made Jessie's heart leap in her chest.

“Disco,” she shouted again. “You've got to jump. I'm right here. I'll catch you.”

Disco laughed a wild laugh. “That's what Ratty said—‘Jump.' Do you think I'm dumb enough to fall for the same trick twice?”

“I'm not Ratty, and that was a long time ago. Jump.”

“Who are you trying to kid? Ratty's here. You're working for him.”

A hulking flame sprang up behind him like a red-gold assassin.

“Disco, I'll catch you. You're going to die. Jump.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Jump,” Jessie screamed over the fire, holding out her hands. “Jump.” She scarcely noticed the firemen running across the yard, unrolling their net, pushing past her.

“Jump,” Jessie screamed.

“Make me.”

“Come on, buddy,” said a fireman, “jump. Right in the net. Nothin' to it.”

“He's blind,” Jessie said.

“No, I'm not. The joke's on you. I can see for miles and miles.” Disco laughed his wild laugh. “I'm stoned out of my mind, you motherfuckers. This is all a dream.”

He had time to begin one more laugh. Then a red-gold curtain wrapped itself around him, choking off the sound. Disco's long hair went up like sparklers. And then he was gone.

Another giant bone cracked. The tremor unleashed another scorching wave. It blew the wall out, blew Jessie across the yard. She rolled over in the dirt—the earth felt cold despite the fire—and picked herself up. Then someone was leading her into the shelter of the barn.

The fire roared and roared again.

“Where are the hoses?” Jessie shouted. “Where are the hoses?”

“Too late for that, miss,” said a fireman, watching with his arms folded across his chest.

Disco's window was gone. Jessie couldn't even find the place in the flames where it had been. The house had lost all structure and identity. It was just a heap of combustibles.

Jessie stepped out of the barn, her eyes searching for Zyzmchuk. He came walking out of the woods. There, between the trees and fire, he looked for the first time small. Jessie went to him.

“Too late,” was all he said.

Behind him, from some clearing in the woods, an unmarked, unlit helicopter rose and veered into the purple sky.

31

On the way to the station house, Jessie said, “I got a good look at the one who hit you on the head. It was the real estate man.”

Zyzmchuk said, “Describe him.”

“Medium-sized. Pinstripe suit. Glasses. A little overweight.” She shrugged. “Ordinary-looking. He reminds me of one of those commentators on TV.”

“Which one?”

“I can't remember.”

“Not Andy Rooney?”

“No.”

“Thank God,” said Zyzmchuk. “I'd hate like hell to have gotten the shit kicked out of me by Andy Rooney.”

The fire chief and the police chief were brothers. The police chief was the firstborn. He'd hogged most of the dominant genes. The fire chief was younger and softer at the edges.

“We wouldn'ta known about the 'Vette at all,” the police chief was saying, “if it hadn'ta been for a—what did she call herself again?”

“A ornithologist,” the fire chief said, stressing every syllable.

“Bird watcher, to you and me,” the police chief said. “Now, I ask you, what's a bird watcher doing in the middle of the woods at two in the
A.M
?”

“Studying owls,” Zyzmchuk said.

The police chief gave Zyzmchuk a long look. The fire chief gave him a longer one. These weren't the first long looks Zyzmchuk had attracted since he and Jessie had entered the police station. The first one had come when Zyzmchuk showed them a card in his wallet. The police chief had taken it into another room, talked for a few minutes on the phone and returned saying, “Okeydoke. I'm s'posed to help you in any way.”

“Help him in any way?” the fire chief had said. “Is he FBI or something?”

“Something,” the police chief had barked at him, venting annoyance where he could, in an old, familiar place. The fire chief had shrunk in his chair.

The next long look had come from Jessie herself, when the police chief said, “Maybe you could give me some idea what this is all about.”

And Zyzmchuk had simply replied, “It's a missing child case. Her child.”

The police chief had glanced at Jessie and then said, “Do you mean the kid was on the chopper?”

“I don't think so.”

“You don't think so. Do you want us to trace it anyway?”

“You can try,” Zyzmchuk had said, “but it was a Sikorsky S-76, with no markings and a seven-hundred-mile range. It won't be easy.”

“How does he know that?” the fire chief had asked. “It was dark.”

The police chief had answered his brother with a glare. But Jessie thought it was a good question. That's when she had given Zyzmchuk her long look.

Now the police chief said, “Owls. That's right. Owls. Anyway, this … bird watcher is camped out in the woods, not far from the state line—”

“Where the old lumber track runs,” the fire chief interrupted.

“I'm coming to that.” The police chief gave the fire chief a withering look. The fire chief stared at his boots.

“Where the old lumber track runs,” the police chief continued. “Of course, no one uses it now. There's a sign up prohibiting any motorized traffic.”

“That's to stop the dirt-bikers,” the fire chief said.

“Shit, he doesn't want to hear about the dirt-bikers,” snapped the police chief. “Pardon my French,” he added to Jessie.

“Sorry,” the fire chief said.

The police chief sighed. “So our bird watcher, camped out at two in the
A.M.,
sees headlights shining through the trees and hears a car. It goes by, maybe a hundred yards from her. A little later she hears a person or persons, she's not sure which, walking back the other way.” He paused. “Okay?”

Zyzmchuk nodded.

“Now, this bird watcher happens to be one of those—how would you say it?”

“Greenpeace types?” offered the fire chief.

“Close enough. So in the morning she calls the station to report a violation of the motorized vehicle prohibition. That was yesterday, but I couldn't spare a man to go over there until today. I just thought it was kids drinking, if you follow me. Didn't expect to actually find anything.”

“Of course not,” Zyzmchuk said. “Can we have a look?”

“Sure. In the morning.”

“I meant now.”

“Now? We can't do anything now. It's dark. In the morning, we'll go in with the jeep and give it a shot.”

“That's fine,” Zyzmchuk said. “I don't want to do any hauling tonight. Just look around.”

The police chief gazed unhappily at his watch. “Well, if it's—”

“Thanks,” Zyzmchuk said. “We could pick up your diver on the way.”

The fire chief's jaw dropped and his brother's eyebrows rose, as though in demonstration of some Newtonian law.

“Davey?” said the police chief. “Davey's not going to want to go in the drink at this time of night. And besides, who's gonna pay his overtime?”

“I'll pay,” Zyzmchuk said.

The chiefs exchanged a look. Some sort of communication was passing between them, Jessie saw, but very slowly.

“Plus a bonus,” Zyzmchuk added.

That speeded things up. The chiefs nodded. “Okeydoke,” said the elder.

Frost coated the windshield of the police chief's car. His brother scraped it off. “Going to be a cold winter,” he said to no one in particular.

They drove through the quiet town, the police chief and Zyzmchuk in front, Jessie and the fire chief in back. There were no other cars on the road. The fire chief said, “Joanne picked out the turkey this aft.”

His brother grunted. Jessie wondered what had happened to the turkey at Spacious Skies.

After a while, the fire chief said, “They say rain for Thursday.” Later, gazing out the window, he added, “But I think snow.”

The police chief snorted.

Davey lived in a tiny shingle house on the edge of town. He was waiting in the driveway, beside a rusty pickup. “I'll follow you,” he said. Davey's eyes were wide in the night; he had a few wispy hairs on his chin and looked about seventeen.

“Well, now, Davey,” the police chief said through his rolled-down window, “you know the way up to Little Pond, don't you?”

Davey blinked. “Sure. I was there this afternoon.”

“Then maybe you could take our friends by yourself. They just want a look-see.”

Davey's eyes went from one to another. He'd gotten lost somewhere on the ellipse of the police chief's thought.

Zyzmchuk showed him the next move by saying, “Fine with me.”

“Okay,” said Davey.

The police chief turned to Zyzmchuk. “I'll be saying good night then.”

“Good night.”

Zyzmchuk and Jessie got out of the car. The fire chief jumped out of the back and hurried into the front. The car was rolling before he could close the door.

Davey looked up at Zyzmchuk. “All set?”

They climbed onto the torn front seat of the pickup, Davey behind the wheel, Jessie in the middle, Zyzmchuk on the outside. As Davey started the motor, the door of the house opened and a woman in a housecoat ran out.

“Here,” she said, thrusting a Thermos through Davey's window. She didn't look at Davey's passengers. “I'll leave egg salad in the fridge. You can make sandwiches.”

“Okay, Mom.”

She ran back into the house.

Davey backed out of the driveway and drove east on Route 9, into the mountains. He leaned over the wheel, eyes fixed on the road. So were Zyzmchuk's. Jessie tried closing hers, but that only made her head hurt more. She wondered how Zyzmchuk's head felt: he hadn't said anything about it. In the dim light of the cab, she looked for damage on the back of his head. There was no dried blood—he'd been struck with the side of the gasoline can, not an edge—but she thought she saw a bump pushing through the iron-gray hair.

Zyzmchuk felt her gaze and turned. Their eyes met. “That was only round two,” he said. “We'll get our licks in.”

Jessie laughed, not so much at what he said as at the revelation that another mind was running parallel to her own. Davey glanced at them, looked quickly away. Jessie suddenly felt very safe, almost as though she could stay in the cab of the rusty pickup forever, with the alert boy at the wheel and the parallel mind at her side. Almost, except for Kate. Kate, who like Davey had a Mom: a Mom like a turtle shell. The cab of the pickup was her shell, and she was Kate's.

“I've been meaning to ask you something,” Jessie said.

“Ask.”

“What was it you said to Mr. Mickey?”

Zyzmchuk smiled. “Kaka idyot Polkovnik Grushin?”

“Meaning?”

“How is Colonel Grushin?”

“In?”

“Russian.”

Jessie was aware of Davey's quick glance. She lowered her voice. “And he understood?”

“What do you think?” Zyzmchuk said, not lowering his.

“Yes,” Jessie replied in a normal tone. “He has an accent. I thought he was Scandinavian. I even asked him.”

“That must have amused him.”

“It annoyed him. He said he was from Hermosa Beach.”

“Is that on the Black Sea?”

“No,” Jessie said, “near Redondo.” And then she saw his smile. “So he's Russian, then?”

Zyzmchuk nodded.

“A Russian … agent?” The phrase, so common in the papers, on TV, in the movies, sounded unreal.

But Davey's darting look was real, and so was Zyzmchuk's voice. “Looks like it,” he said.

“But how did you know?”

Zyzmchuk replied with a sound that might have been the beginning of a laugh, a bitter one, or maybe just a grunt.

Davey turned onto a dirt road that climbed a hill into thick woods. An old stone wall ran along the right side. The road was rough. Every bump hurt Jessie's head.

“Slow down a little,” Zyzmchuk said.

Davey slowed down.

“But what connection can there be between Kate and … Russia?”

An opening appeared in the wall. Davey slowed still more and turned into it. His headlights swept across a sign nailed to a tree: P
OSITIVELY
N
O
M
OTORIZED
V
EHICLES
.