The Reckoning (26 page)

“You.”

Boonie looked around his position. He was in the airport parking lot. Wide open. In a pool of white light under a streetlamp.

“Coker—”

“Tell them.”

“Hey, Coker, fuck you!”

Boonie's driver's side mirror blew into a thousand pieces. Bits of plastic and glass showered across his windshield. Boonie heard no shot, saw no muzzle flash. He just got the thunk-smack of Coker's round coming in and the shattered mirror at his left elbow, hanging from the mount.

“Tell them.”

Boonie got on the radio. “All units, this is Six. Hold your positions. Repeat, do not engage—”

“Boonie, she's getting away. Call for Air!”

“Repeat, hold your positions.”

“Six, this is—”

“Everybody shut the fuck up.”

They did.

“Coker, what the fuck good did this do you?”

“It got Bluebell out of Niceville.”

“And now we got you, which was the point.”

“Haven't got me yet.”

“You're in the tower, Coker. Line of sight.”

“Sorry about your side mirror. I know you love that Bullitt car.”

“You killed four cops, Coker. We're not buddies anymore.”

“Sorry to hear that. It was just business. So is this. And stay off that radio.”

Boonie was already moving toward the broadcast button. He stopped six inches away. “You got a scope on me?”

“Yeah. Wide-angle, Boonie. You need to lose some weight.”

“Six, this is Blue Three. What do you want—”

“I want you all to observe total radio silence. Do. You. Follow?”

A pause.

An eloquent pause.

Boonie could feel the disapproval radiating out of the car speakers.

Finally, “Roger that.”
The
asshole
part was left unspoken, but everybody heard it.

“Coker? You there?” Silence. “Coker?”

“I'm here. Answer me a question, Boonie?”

Boonie tried to get his temper under control. “Yeah. Be my fucking guest. I got all the time in the world.”

“What the fuck is going on in Niceville?”

“Waddya mean?”

“I mean, six dead civilians, two serial killers running loose—”

“You been traveling, haven't you?”

“Why?”

“Haven't been following the news?”

“Not close. I saw Mavis on CNN yesterday.”

“Then you don't know?”

“Know what?”

“About Nick?”

“No. What about him?”

Boonie told him, about Lemon and Frank Barbetta. And Nick. There was a long silence.

“Nick's down?”

“Yeah. He's the worst. Lemon, he'll have nerve damage, need a bunch of surgeries. Barbetta's sixty-forty to make it through. But Nick…”

“How bad?”

Boonie thought about it. “They don't get his heartbeat steadied, he could be dead by sunset. Or not. He could be up and around or he could be down in the morgue. Could go either way.”

A long silence.

“Who was the shooter?”

“Maris Yarvik.”

“The GM guy? Owns the dealership? I've played rugby with that guy. What the fuck he do that for?”

“Still trying to figure that out.”

“What's his status now?”

“Buck naked on his back on a tin tray.”

“Who did him?”

“Reed Walker.”

“Jesus. Any idea what was going on?”

“What the fuck do you care?”

“You're still breathing, aren't you? What was it all about?”

Boonie thought about everything he'd heard. “Looks like some of our regular citizens are going nuts on a random basis. Seriously psycho nuts. People with no history. People just like you. Nick was working on a lead, but it was all fucked up.”

“What was it?”

“Coker, this is crazy. Come on in and we'll have a beer and I'll explain it all to you while they're strapping you down on the death gurney.”

“I repeat. What was Nick's lead?”

“He thought it had something to do with Crater Sink. The whole Niceville thing. We talked about it coupla months ago, over drinks at the Bar Belle. I had a dead guy I couldn't figure out—”

“Merle Zane?”

“Yeah. Him.”

“Died twice, right?”

“Yeah. That's what it looked like. Nick was onto that. So was Featherlight. They had a theory.”

“And now they're both down. Tell you anything? 'Cause it fucking well should.”

“I'm working on it.”

“If you're working on it, why the fuck are you dicking around trying to catch me?”

“What? You're a fucking fugitive!”

“Ever hear of allocating limited resources?”

“I don't get it.”

“You're the goddamned FBI, Boonie. Go find out what the fuck is wrong with Niceville.”

“And then what?”

“Fix it, Boonie. Fix it.”

“Yeah, well, thanks a heap, Coker. A lot of our people around here think that
you
are one of the things that's wrong with Niceville. Is that your excuse, Coker. The demons made you do it?”

“What, the bank? The cops? Fuck that, Boonie. I don't do excuses. That was all me.”

“Charlie Danziger said it was all him. He said you had nothing to do with it.”

“Charlie Danziger couldn't shoot the balls off a Brahma bull if it was standing on him. He was just trying to take the heat off.”

“He died a good man, Coker.”

“Yeah, I was there. You ever find that Endicott asshole? The one who killed Luckinbaugh and sent those shooters up to Charlie's ranch?”

“We found most of him. In a Dumpster behind the Marriott. He was missing a head.”

“Delores Maranzano did that?”

“No way. She's just a
pass-around broad
. Not a player. That was all coming from those three mob mutts up in Leaven—”

Boonie realized he was about to fill Coker in on the three goombahs squatting in Delores Maranzano's suite at the Memphis. And then he remembered that Coker wasn't on the side of the angels anymore and he slammed the lid on it.

He suddenly felt sad, tired, sick. “You know, all in all, I really wish you hadn't done it, Coker. I really do. It just fucked up…everything.”

“Jeez, Boonie, man the fuck up, will ya? What's next, snowflakes and mittens and whiskers on kittens?”

“Yeah, well, fuck you and enjoy your day, Coker. I'll be seeing you soon. Real soon.”

“Sooner than you think, Boonie.”

The Lady Grace ICU, just before daybreak, when all the family members have finally passed out on the couches in the private waiting rooms and the bone-weary nurses are getting ready for the shift change and out in the dark halls an old man is pushing an electric scrubber over the terrazzo tiles and the entire floor smells of bleach and blood and death. Joan Styles, the duty nurse for the ICU, is sitting at the center station, head down, dog-tired, working on patient reports for the shift-change briefing coming up in two hours.

“Joan?”

She looked up from her work, saw a pretty young blond woman standing there looking back at her. She was wearing a navy blue paramedic uniform and a careful smile. Her name tag read
FILLION
.

Joan shook her head. “Barb, where the heck have you been?”

“I know. I just got back from Marietta. I was out on the trail and there was no coverage.”

Joan's expression changed. “You're here to see Kikki?”

“Yes. I heard it was bad?”

Joan got up and came around the desk, stood in front of Barb. “Honey, he's gone. He died. Kikki died.”

It seemed that Barb Fillion didn't register that at first. She tilted her head to one side. “No, wait. I heard he was…I heard he—”

“He never came out of it. He had a No Code DNR note in his Living Will. Two hours ago the RTs took him off the tube to see if he could breathe on his own. He crashed and they had to let him go.”

Fillion took one step backward, and then another. She turned and put her hands on the counter, bent her head. Her shoulders started to heave and a thin keening sound came out of her tight lips.

Joan put a hand on her shoulder, said nothing for a while, just let her go.

After a bit, Fillion straightened, sighed. “Where is he now?”

“Downstairs. Do you want to see him?”

Fillion shook her head. “No. Not yet. Did they ever find out who attacked him?”

“Not yet, honey.”

“I heard it happened right after I said good night to him. Right there in the lot. Didn't the cameras catch anything?”

“Nothing useful. Somebody in a dark jacket and pants. Came out of nowhere and hit him with some kind of steel canister. They found a fire extinguisher in the bushes. It was taken from the ambulance.”

“No prints?”

“No nothing, Barb. Honey, I'm so sorry.”

Fillion nodded, made an effort to pull herself together. She looked around the ward. There was a wall of windows along one side, and beyond the windows there were ten ICU bays, separated by hanging curtains. Seven of them were occupied: four elderly men, already skeletal; a young girl with yellow skin and a shaved head; a black man with a neck brace and skull wrappings; and a younger white male, his hard face pale, his black hair brushed back. He was surrounded by LED readouts and machines, was on intravenous drip. A young black-haired woman was curled up in a chair next to the bed, wrapped in a pale blue blanket, her head back, sound asleep.

“You're busy tonight,” she said in a whisper.

“Yes,” said Joan, relieved to be on more neutral ground, one medic to another.

“Is that Nick Kavanaugh?”

“It is,” said Joan. “They just brought him back from Cardio.”

“Who was the doc?”

“Ginsberg.”

“Ginsberg's good.”

Joan nodded, her face solemn.

“He is. Ginsberg said it was an odd case. In a way this man was very lucky. The bullet was a forty-five hollow point. You've seen what they can do, I know. This one came in at a slight angle—they think Nick was turning as he got shot. Broke some ribs and ripped a big trench along his right side, but because the slug was a hollow point it flattened out and didn't penetrate the peritoneal cavity. It did transfer a lot of kinetic energy, so there was hydrostatic shock. The shock wave affected his heart somehow. They've stitched him up and wrapped his torso, but his heart rate is all over the place. We're just trying to stabilize it. That's his wife with him. Kate. A lovely woman. She's not supposed to be in there, but…how could we say no?”

Fillion walked over to the glass, put out her right hand, laid her palm against it. She inhaled through her mouth and closed her eyes, seemed to go down inside herself.
As if she were trying to feel them through the glass
, Joan thought.

the female is in anguish, but the male is dormant—go wake them

Fillion shook her head several times, opened her eyes, quickly backed away from the window. There was something in her expression that Joan had never seen there before. Barb Fillion was a marathon runner, an outdoor girl, vibrant and funny, a bit wild off duty. None of this was there in her face. She looked…absent.

“There were three others, I heard?”

“Yes. Mr. Featherlight is down in ICU. He's got nerve damage. He'll need a lot of physio.”

“Mavis and Frank? What about them?”

Joan hesitated, something crossing her face, a dark feeling, there and gone. She brightened. “Well, you know Mavis. She's indestructible. They put a cast on her and tried to admit her, but she told them all to go bugger themselves. She came up here on crutches and looked at Nick through the glass. Then she spoke to Kate and gave her a bear hug and then I heard she drove herself home in a big black police truck.”

“That's Mavis. What about Frank?”

Joan went sideways, looked at her watch. “Honey…I'm not at liberty to comment. About Staff Sergeant Barbetta, I mean. His condition. There's not a lot we're allowed to say at this point. Not even to an EMT. You follow?”

No, Barb Fillion did not follow.

Barb Fillion took the elevator down to the main lobby, which was still packed with cops and firefighters and plainclothes cops from the CID. She walked through them, saying hello to people she knew, and came out into the half-light of dawn.

There were several satellite trucks scattered around the parking lot, their dishes extended, people milling around a catering van. The air smelled of gasoline fumes, cigarette smoke, and burned coffee. Nobody noticed her and she moved quickly into the shadowy walk that ran around to the auxiliary parking lot.

Her EMT truck was sitting there, engine idling. She beeped it open and got into the driver's side, slipped her belt on, and looked into the back, where there was a stretcher braced against the side wall. Rainey Teague was strapped down on the stretcher, covered in a red blanket.

An IV drip ran into the elbow of his right arm. His long blond hair was matted and dirty and tied back with an elastic. His skin was dry, his breathing deep and rhythmic, his eyes half open, a thin slice of pale blue glittering between the lids. He was heavily sedated. A monitor glowed overhead, showing his vital signs.

She looked at him for a while, feeling nothing, and then she put the truck in gear and rolled slowly out of the parking lot, sliding past the media vans and the news people clustered around the catering truck, chattering like parakeets.

The EMT truck reached the exit, turned west onto Peachtree, made a right at Bluebonnet and then another right onto North Gwinnett.

Up on the sixth floor, at the window down the hall from the ICU, Kate stood and watched the ambulance roll away, wondering about it and about the woman who was driving it. She went back down the hall.

Joan Styles was standing there, a worried expression on her face, her hands together. “Are you all right, Kate?”

Kate said nothing for a moment. “No, I guess not. Who was that woman, Joan?”

“Her name's Barb Fillion. She's a paramedic.”

“Is she?” said Kate in an abstracted way.

“You look…worried.”

Kate smiled at her, a thin wry smile that emphasized her fatigue and her fear. Joan shook her head. “I didn't mean about Nick. Of course you are. I was thinking about Barb Fillion. Did you know her or her partner Kikki?”

“No. It's just that…a while back, when she came to the window and touched it, Nick's heart rate went up. The beeping started again. I was going to call you, but as soon as that woman took her hand away, he went right back to normal. Well, normal for now.”

Joan didn't know what to say to that. “Kate, why don't you go home, have a shower, get some rest. I have to do some things for Nick anyway…”

Kate's whole body seemed to falter, and she began to cry, cry hard, deep wrenching sobs, and all in silence, her tears streaming down.

Joan took her in her arms, held her.

“He's going to die, Joan,” Kate said, burying her face in Joan's shoulder. “I can
feel
him going. He's just…fading.”

“Honey, he's not fading. He's not going to die. He's basically pretty tough. Yes his heart rate is irregular. We're dealing with it.”

Kate held on to Joan for a time. Joan could feel her body trembling, feel the sobs go through her, shaking her to her core.

Time passed.

Finally Kate pulled back, took a tissue from her pocket, wiped her eyes, looked up at Joan. “I'm sorry…that was—”

“Long overdue,” said Joan. “And I'm telling you the truth. He's going to be fine. The operation went well, and we don't see any sign of internal bleeding in that lung. His vitals are—”

“A roller coaster. I sit there and I can't take my eyes off those monitors, and then I look at him and then back at the monitors…back and forth, back and forth, I can't seem to stop. I am afraid that if I stop, then he'll die, but if I just keep going back and forth I can keep him alive. I think I'm going crazy, Joan. I really do.”

“You need to go home, get some sleep.”

“But what if…if I'm not here, won't he know? What if he's waiting until I leave so then he can…he can leave too. And if he leaves, I don't know what I'll do. And he'll be dead because I took Rainey Teague into our house, and that boy is…evil. That boy sent Maris Yarvik to kill us all and he did a pretty good job and it's all my fault…it's all my fault.”

Joan studied her. This was borderline hysteria, she recognized the symptoms. “Look, Kate, first of all, it's Maris Yarvik's fault. He's the one who did the shooting. I don't know what to think about Rainey Teague. I do know that you've been tough enough for three wives. And you need to stand down. I have to see to Nick's dressings and change his IV. It'll take a while. You really need to go home now. He'll be right here when you get back.”

Kate was looking at her but not hearing.

The mirror.

If he does die, he could go into the mirror, like Anora and Clara and Glynis and Mom.

He could go to that farm he saw on the wall in Delia Cotton's basement.

Then I'd always know where he was.

And one day maybe I could go into the mirror too, and then we could be together there.

I have to go home and get the mirror.

She kissed Joan on the cheek, said she would do that, she'd go home and have a shower, but she was coming right back.

“Kate, really—”

“No,” Kate said with heat. “I'll be right back. An hour. No more. Whatever you do, don't you let him go. Promise me? No matter what, you keep him
alive
. One hour. Promise me.”

Her eyes were green fire, her skin as pale as chalk. Joan was going to say something vague and comforting, but she felt the intensity.

“Yes,” she said, stiffening, rising up to it. “I promise. I will not let him go.”

“Your word? One hour?”

“One hour. My word.”

Barb Fillion was rolling northeast, heading for Route 311. Route 311 led to Gracie. Candleford House was in Gracie. That was where she was supposed to take the kid. She had no idea why.

Fillion had the EMT com set off and her cell phone too, but she had some music playing on the EMT truck's FM radio, a slow jazzy number. It helped to keep the
thing
in her head quiet. She found it almost bearable to be alive if the voice could
just be quiet
. She would do what it wanted.

She had to. If she didn't, she got
stung.

But if the voice stayed quiet, Fillion could go a while longer without trying to kill herself. The voice had promised her that she would be released as soon as she had done what was required.

The streets of Niceville were deserted, the lights glimmering amber under the canopy of live oaks and the crosshatched netting of the streetcar wires and telephone lines that stitched downtown Niceville together. All the storefronts were dark, their windows reflecting the image of the ambulance as it went north along the main street, heavy tires rumbling over the streetcar tracks.

A mile up it drifted past the darkened storefront of Uncle Moochie's Pawnshop, where Rainey Teague had first looked into Glynis Ruelle's mirror three years ago. Where it had all begun.

A light was burning in the upstairs window above the store. Uncle Moochie, a morose Lebanese, was sitting in a battered leather chair in a parlor cluttered with antiques, listening to zither music,
The Third Man
theme by Anton Karas.

He was reading by the light of a stained-glass lamp, smoking a long curved pipe. The smoke was rising up into the still air in a single column until it reached the yellow tin ceiling, where it flattened out and coiled into itself like a snake.

Uncle Moochie heard the sound of a truck going by, looked out the window, and saw the ambulance roll slowly past, no lights and no sirens, its interior dark, the driver's hands visible on the wheel, pale and slender, a woman's hands.

Like they're transporting a dead man
, he thought.
No point in rushing things
.

He wished them well and went back to his book,
The Shining
by Stephen King. Uncle Moochie enjoyed tales of horror and the supernatural. They were a wonderful distraction from the deadly dullness of everyday life in Niceville.