Charlie laughed. “I did, but he won’t. One more thing, a list of people at the conference in Dallas when you talked about the hotel fires. A list of attendees.”
“For God’s sake, Charlie! I can’t just snap my fingers and have lists appear! What else do you want? A list of registered voters? List of high school graduates for the years 1950 through 1980? Some other little thing on that order?”
“Now, Phil, don’t get testy on me,” Charlie said. “Tomorrow? The next day? Send them express mail, will you? Good talking to you, pal. Take care.” Gently he hung up. He looked at his package of steaks and started to sing lustily—and not very well—bits and pieces of
The Marriage of Figaro
in no particular order.
Two days later Charlie sat upright at four in the morning. A window, he thought, wide awake, shivering. And gasoline. Constance woke up and said, “What was that?”
“I don’t know. Get a robe on.” He was already pulling on his robe on his way to the door. He touched the handle, the wood paneling, sniffed, and then opened it. The smell of
gas was stronger. No heat, no smoke, no flicker
ing light. Only then did he turn on the hall light and start downstairs. He followed the strong smell of gas to the living room, where a window had been broken. No fire. He went out on the porch and found that the front of the house had been drenched with gasoline. The can was on the porch. Constance was right behind him.
“It’s okay,” he said, his voice hard and flat. “It’ll evaporate fast in this breeze.” He picked the can up carefully, using the back of his finger under the handle. It was empty. He carried it inside, through the house to the back porch, where he put it down. Then he inspected the rest of the house, starting at the ground floor, and continuing on to the basement, the garage, upstairs, even the attic. When he finished, Constance handed him a glass nearly full of bourbon. He took a long drink, and stopped shivering.
Constance drew him to the kitchen table where she had a second glass. She pointed to a rock and a piece of crumpled paper. “I tried not to mess up any prints there might be,” she said. Her voice sounded strained and unfamiliar. He put his arm around her shoulders and leaned over to read the note without picking it up.
Butt out or the next time I’ll light it.
He took a deep breath, raised his glass, and drank again.
Constance had been seized with a fury so intense that it frightened her. Fury and fear, fear of the fury, fear for Charlie. She had flashes of the years in New York, toward the end of his career with the fire department, a few years filled with nightmares, jerking from sleep to wakefulness just like tonight, but without cause. She saw again how he had felt doors before opening them, how his gaze had traveled over a new room, seeking the fire escape, searching for the fire trap, the piled up clothes behind a door, the flammable curtains, the spilled combustible. She heard again his garble of words as he fought with dream demons who breathed fire, who were creatures of fire. His thrashing about, muttering, moaning, then the sudden jerk into full wakefulness that would remain the rest of the night, whether it was only an hour or two, or six or seven.
Dear God, she breathed, don’t let it start again. Please.
The orange cat Candy slunk into the room, complaining bitterly, looking about with wild eyes. Brutus watched through slitted eyes from on top the refrigerator. Ashcan had gone into hiding somewhere. What good were they? she thought sourly. Not a peep out of them, not a clue that the house was under attack. What the hell good were they?
“I’ll make some breakfast,” she said. “No point in going back to bed now.”
“I’ll put some cardboard over the window.”
“I did it while you were looking around.”
“I’ll clean up the glass before a cat walks through it.”
She started to say no, sit down and try to relax, but she knew he would not relax again that night. Nor would she.
“He knows we’re closing in,” Charlie said, as he left the kitchen for the vacuum cleaner. “He’s running scared.”
And so was she, she admitted silently. So was she.
Chapter 8
In his dreams
tenements burned, high-rise
condos burned, office buildings burned, factories, single-family houses, schools. He ran here and there futilely as screaming people, ablaze, leaped out of windows. Eventually he was always inside the burning building, running down one hallway after another, feeling doors, watching doorknobs glow red, burst into flames, watching walls start to smoke, char, burst into flames. He ran until he dropped in exhaustion, and the fire raced toward him from different directions. He buried his head in his arms and waited for it, and woke up, sweating, shaking, through with sleep for that night. The reports came in, the lists arrived, microfiches, Xeroxes of Xeroxes of newspaper accounts, photocopies of insurance claims, police statements, statements from fire department heads. Thoreson called daily, demanding action; Charlie stopped returning his calls. Phil sent funny postcards but did not call.
Charlie was staring moodily at a photograph of John Loesser, who had left his last apartment without leaving a forwarding address. Outside, a guard dog padded quietly on her patrol of the yard. The cats were in a panic because of the dog, who simply ignored them all. He knew so much, Charlie thought bitterly, and not the important thing: why. Loesser had survived an attack, had quit his job with one of the biggest, most prestigious insurance companies in the world in order to become an independent adjuster who apparently never adjusted anything. Two weeks after his release from the hospital, the first hotel had burned, the one in which he had been attacked. He had access to computer data, knew how to use it, how to interpret it. People began to go mad here and there; Sir Galahad arrived and burned down a hotel; people stopped going mad. Probably he had enough now to make an arrest, Charlie thought; a formal investigation would cinch it, and yet… He had no intention of turning over a damn thing until he had a clue about the why. He scowled at the photograph, cursing John Loesser under his breath. You son of a bitch, he thought, why?
Constance entered his study and touched his shoulder. “Charlie, Byron Weston is on the phone. You should talk to him.”
Her voice was strange, remote, her face set in the expression she had when she was controlling herself perhaps too much. Charlie moved the photograph of Loesser away from the telephone on his desk, and put it face down. He lifted the extension. “Yeah,” he said.
“Charlie, when you were in Orick, you were asking questions about the old hotel. Why? What did that have to do with the epidemic of madness?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie said softly. “Why do you ask?”
There was a pause; Charlie could hear other voices, then the slamming of a door. Byron returned. “Sorry,” he said. “Charlie, did you watch the news tonight, national news?”
“No.”
“Okay. There was a story. It’ll be a bigger story tomorrow. We have a repeat of the Orick madness, and this time I didn’t predetermine the boundaries. I’ve just been listening.”
“Is there a hotel involved?”
“Two of them,” Byron said harshly. “No fire, though. Look, you brought up the feet that people in Orick had been infected, affected, something—people I excluded in my study there. Well, this morning a sniper held a trainload of people hostage in a tourist attraction here. Nine people were killed before it ended. My office was called and I flew out and arrived within an hour of the end of the siege. I began to listen to people real early this time, and I let them direct the conversations. They say incidents began over a month ago in the town of Grayling in California, and they link the old hotel to the madness. What can you tell me about it, Charlie? I need help with this!”
“Why will it be a bigger story tomorrow?” Charlie asked easily. Constance, listening, shivered at the sound of his voice now.
“Because some of the survivors are telling reporters that a dead man got up and walked. The press will have a field day with this one.”
Charlie talked with Byron for another fifteen minutes; when he was finished, Constance took the phone to make airline reservations for the following morning. She used her name, Constance and Charlie Leidl, she said, spelling it out, and gave her credit card number. Charlie raised an eyebrow, then nodded. She expected Loesser to show up for this one every bit as much as he did.
Flying in to Las Vegas was always a shock, Constance thought, watching the view from her window. Miles and miles of arid wasteland, and then high-rise glitter and neon; barren mountains and straggly sage; and slot machines in the terminal. Then, the silence of the desert and the cacophony of heavy traffic on Interstate 15. Charlie drove, following Byron’s directions, to the California border where he left the interstate for a state road to Grayling.
An hour out of Las Vegas, Byron had said, but it
was only fifty minutes to the small dusty town.
The state road became Main Street where they passed an adobe building, Grayling High School, and then a feed store, a car dealer with half a dozen used cars on display, a few small shops, drugstore, a furniture store, a ten cent store, a St. Vincent DePaul outlet… Everything looked tired, gray, dusty. A scattering of bare trees trembled in a high wind that was very cold. Charlie turned onto Mesquite Street and stopped in front of number 209. Two other cars were already there, one a sleek baby blue Cadillac, Byron Weston’s car.
Charlie stopped in the driveway, got out, and went to open the trunk. He hauled out the suitcases, and then stood surveying the dismal scene. The street was not long, eight or ten houses on each side, and then the desert started again. Most of the houses were wooden, paint cracked and peeling on many of them; no more than one or two appeared well maintained, with lawns and some shrubbery. There had been a little activity on Main Street, a few cars in motion, a few people bundled against the wind; here no one was in sight. At the end of the street a dust devil formed and raced away erratically.
“Well,” he said, shivering. He regarded the house before them glumly. Peeled paint, gray, a few misshapen sagebrush plants on the sides of the steps. “I don’t think,” he said, “I’d be tempted to relocate here. Let’s do it.”
Constance nodded, chilled through and through by the biting wind, just as dismayed and disheartened by the dreary town as he was.
The woman who admitted them to the house was tall, beautifully built, with straight black hair and black eyes. More Indian than Spanish, Constance thought, shaking her hand.
“Beatrice Montoya,” the woman said. “I’m Byron’s assistant. I’m to show you your room and give you a drink—coffee, whatever you want—and then let you start examining the reports, if you wish.”
She led them through the house as she talked. The living room was furnished with heavy black Spanish furniture that looked uncomfortable. Very fine Indian blankets hung on the walls, relieving the darkness and heaviness. They went through the kitchen, sparsely equipped with a stove and ancient refrigerator and scant cabinets, and on the other side of it into a narrow hall painted white. There were several closed doors. Theirs was the last room. Here there was plenty of light, with east windows, white walls, and more of the lovely blankets, one of them on the bed, two on the walls.
“Not the Waldorf,” Beatrice was saying, as she motioned them to enter. “But not too bad. Byron said to let you decide. If you’d rather go
to the motel, it’s only a few blocks away. It’s just
that it’s full of outsiders right now. You know, the curious, a few reporters, ghouls, that sort of thing.”
She was too polite, Charlie decided, regarding her thoughtfully when she paused. Too reserved, hardly even trying to pretend she was interested in them. He and Constance were also outsiders, he realized, ghouls, curiosity seekers. Beatrice started to turn away and he said, “Did you think we’d be better off in the motel?”
She looked startled for a second, then shrugged. “It’s up to you. Byron and the others will be back in another half hour or so. I’ll let you wash up, or unwrap, whatever, and go put on some coffee.”
“I don’t know about you,” Constance said as soon as the woman closed the door, “but I’m freezing. I intend to change clothes and then we’ll see.”
When they returned to the kitchen a few minutes later, Beatrice had a tray ready. She picked it up. “This way.” She led them into the other side of the house, where they stopped at a comfortable room that probably had been intended as a den. There was a wood burning stove, some bean bag chairs in a corner, an overstuffed sofa, also pushed out of the way, and two desks and several office chairs. A computer system was on one desk. An assortment of bottles and glasses was on an end table, and computer printouts, maps, rolled up papers, notebooks, seemed to be everywhere.
A large topographical map had been thumb tacked to one wall. Three red circles made a triangle. Charlie walked to it.
“Here’s Grayling,” Beatrice said, pointing to one of the circles. “This one is the big resort hotel going up, not quite finished yet, and that one is Old West. That’s where… where the incident occurred.”
Charlie nodded. He had looked up the area at home, but this map was a superb USGS map that showed every rock, every dip and hollow. That’s all that was out there, he thought: rises, dips, hollows, chasms, peaks, dry lakes, dry riverbeds, barren rocks, scrub desert brush… . Behind him Beatrice was pouring coffee.
“We started at seven this morning,” she was saying to Constance, “and by this afternoon, Byron knew we all had to see the location for ourselves. The stories just weren’t making any sense, and they vary so much about where things happened. We drew to see who’d go today, who’d wait until tomorrow. So Polly and Mike and Byron went out, oh, an hour ago, maybe. They’ll be back any minute now.”
Byron wished that Beatrice had come instead of Polly, and knew it was unfair, and even tried to force himself not to see the little byplays that always occurred when Polly and Mike were together. If only Mike weren’t such an ass, he thought, and knew that was hopeless too. Mike was an ass, yearning so openly for
Polly’s attention that it was embarrassing for everyone around them. And Polly could be a bitch, he also knew, teasing just enough to make Mike even more an ass, but never enough to warrant a dressing down. Mike was twenty-six, Polly a couple of years older and very attractive, with pale hair and blue eyes with incredible lashes. Mike was overweight, a wrestler who would make a damn good psychologist some day, but at the present time was simply a pain in the ass. At the last minute Byron had decided to let Mike drive his Land Rover in, more to keep him busy than because he feared for his Cadillac. After all, he had thought, the road was used every day by the workers at Old West; it had to be okay. Okay turned out to be an overstatement. It was just passable, with deep ruts and rocky places and precipitous hills. Mike loved driving it. He kept glancing in the rearview mirror to grin at Polly, who was being shaken like a malted milk.
He rounded a sharp curve and Old West came into view. Two buildings, the old hotel and another one halfway down the street, were the original structures, aged, weathered silvery, looking very much at home in the desert. Everything else was new. Dust swirled in the street, settled, swirled.
“See if you can drive all around the place,” Byron said when they drew close. The road wound by an area with a portable toilet and a parked trailer, then behind the old hotel, and the new buildings, and finally behind the railroad station, where it ended. The last quarter mile there was no real road, just a bulldozed surface. It was late enough for the shadows of the buildings to fill the street and made deep pockets of darkness. Wood that had not turned silver gleamed golden in the shafts of sunlight streaking in low between the buildings. As soon as the motor noise stopped, the whistle of the wind rose. The sign hanging over the entrance to the saloon swished as it was lifted, dropped, lifted again. Polly drew her shearling coat tighter, the collar halfway covering her head, and picked up her pad of graph paper. Mike checked his camera and started down the street, and Byron turned his attention to the train station platform.
In his mind he reconstructed the scene of the massacre as he had heard it described over and over that day. The train pulled in on the other side of the platform; people got off and milled about. A broad walkway went down both sides of the street in front of the buildings. Eight feet wide, ten feet, with two steps down here and there, lined with railings, hitching posts, big Mexican pots that were still empty, but would hold greenery one day. People started to move down both sides, looking into the shops, with shopkeepers, customers all in costume, going about life as it had been in 1880. Then the show started.
Byron gazed down the length of the street to the hotel at the far end, half a mile away. On the right from here, halfway down the street, was the saloon. The corral was off to one side of it, not visible from here. The cowboys had come from there, whooping and yelling, shooting blanks into the air. Down a few doors from the saloon, opposite it, was the jail; the sheriff had come out with his gun ready, and at the same time several men had run out from the saloon, also with guns. More shooting, more noise. And then the real shooting had started. Byron turned his attention to the saloon again, to the upper story with a narrow balcony where the madman had held the entire town at bay for three hours.
He scowled at the scene, seeing it the way he had heard it described half a dozen times already. Workers had come from the far end, puzzled by the screams, which had not been in the scenario. They had been shot at too, and several of them had been hit, fatally, according to the stories. The ones who could run away had done so. Some of them had not yet been located.
Someone had tried to drive out in a truck and had been shot. From the balcony the killer could see the entire area, and he had been a good shot. Two men finally had crawled behind the saloon building, out the back way on foot, and they had summoned help. And one of the dead men had got up and walked to the hotel. Byron’s scowl deepened as he stared broodingl
y down the wide street of Old West to the hotel.
Obviously the man had not been dead. He had wandered inside, out the back door, out on the desert where he had died, and had not been found. But he had not been dead when he got up and walked. He had not.