The Shimmer (13 page)

When he secured the deadbolt on the door, the noise made her turn to him. Page was afraid she was going to say, "I don't want you here." But instead she told him numbly, "I'm going to take a shower."

She opened a suitcase, removed boxer shorts and a T-shirt--her usual pajamas--and went into the bathroom.

She locked it.

Feeling empty, Page studied each bed and noticed that one had books on the table next to it. Choosing the other, he lay on a thin blanket and listened to the sound of the shower. He smelled smoke on his denim shirt and felt a spreading pain where he'd been kicked in the side.

The memory of the gunman's blazing arms reaching out to embrace him made him grimace.

When Tori came out of the bathroom, she wore the boxer shorts and loose T-shirt. Her towel-dried hair was combed back, darker red than usual because it was damp. She went to the door, shut off the light, and crawled beneath the covers on the other bed.

The scent of soap and shampoo drifted from the bathroom.

"Good night," Page said.

He lay in the darkness, waiting for her to reply.

"Good night," she finally told him, her voice so muted he barely heard her.

Chapter 26.

When Page had learned to fly, his dreams had been filled with the sensation of floating, as if he were in the air on a gentle current, drifting over forests and fields. The plane was as silent as a glider.

He hovered.

He turned.

He sailed along the smooth air.

Now he had a version of that dream. But he wasn't above forests and fields. He was in blackness, suspended in a void, settling, then rising, drifting to the left, pausing, then floating to the right, as if on invisible waves.

The way he'd seen the lights moving.

When he wakened, he felt groggy. He gradually opened his eyes and waited for his troubling memories to anchor him. Daylight streamed past the corners of the cheap drapes. He looked toward the other bed and saw that it was empty, its covers piled to the side. Immediately he sat up, realizing that he still wore his smoke-smelling jeans and denim shirt from the night before. He hadn't even taken off his sneakers.

His side ached worse.

"Tori?"

The bathroom door was open. He looked inside, but she wasn't there.

He hurried to the main door and pulled it open, relieved to see Tori's car.

The sun hurt his eyes. A glance at his watch showed him that the time was almost a quarter after three. He recalled checking his watch when he'd driven Tori back to the motel. The time had been a little after one. My God, I slept more than twelve hours.

Tori.

Stiff from the pain in his side, he ran through the afternoon heat to the motel office. Inside, the same gangly young clerk was behind the desk.

"Did you see my wife go past?"

"She walked down the road toward the Rib Palace a half hour ago."

He gave Page a vaguely accusing look. "Like Chief Costigan told me, I saved a room for you last night. Could've used it when all that trouble happened. Lots of people coming to town."

"I'll pay for not using it. Give it to someone else now."

"I already did after checkout time. A reporter's got it now."

"Reporter?"

"There's a ton of them."

The clerk pointed toward the television next to the soft-drink machine in a corner of the lobby. On the screen, a handsome man in a rumpled suit held a microphone and looked intently at the camera.

His tie was loose and his top shirt button open. His blond hair was in disarray. He had whisker shadow, and his face was drawn with fatigue.

A crowd was gathered behind him. Police officers motioned for people to stay behind barricades. Beyond a cluster of police cars, the observation platform was visible.

"Keep back. This is still a crime scene," a policeman warned, speaking loudly enough for his voice to carry to the microphone.

Meanwhile, the television reporter addressed his viewers. "As you see from the commotion in the background, events are unfolding swiftly. Since First-on-the-Scene News started broadcasting images of the massacre's aftermath early this morning, the eyes of the entire nation have been directed to this quiet Texas town. The gunman's motive appears to have been a religious fixation on the mysterious Rostov lights that attracted the victims here last night. 'You came from hell. Now go back to hell,' witnesses report him shouting before he turned his rifle on them.

"The bizarre circumstances of his rampage prompted many people to start their weekend early and come here to satisfy their curiosity about the unexplained lights that ignited the killer's frenzy.

Those lights have been seen in this area for as long as anyone can remember. Tonight, during our special live broadcast at 9, I'll do my best to show them to you and explain what they are. Before then, Sharon Rivera and I will coanchor expanded editions of our 5 and 6 o'clock broadcasts. The bystander who shot the killer was a woman.

The police haven't released her identity, but I'll do everything I can to find out who she is and be the first to talk to her. This is Brent Loft.

I'll see you at . . ."

"Shit," Page said.

He looked out the window. The previous evening, the road in front of the motel had been almost deserted. Now a stream of vehicles went past, heading to the right, in the direction of the observation platform.

Page realized that Tori's car keys were still in his jeans. He rushed from the office, got into the Saturn, and waited for a break in traffic that allowed him to go in the opposite direction, into town. That side of the road was deserted.

The previous evening, the Rib Palace's parking lot had been only half full, but now it was crammed with vehicles, few of which were pickup trucks. A lot of the cars had rental-company envelopes on the dashboards. Police cruisers were bunched together at one end.

Page hurried inside, where a wave of noisy conversation swept over him. After scanning the animated people at tables and in booths, he caught a glimpse of red hair on his left and noticed Tori sitting at the counter, drinking coffee. An empty plate was in front of her. All the seats were taken, but she was at the counter's end, so he was able to go over and stand next to her.

She glanced in his direction but didn't say anything. He couldn't tell if she looked troubled because of last night or because he stood next to her.

"Are you okay?" He kept his voice low.

"You have my car keys."

"Last night I put them in my jeans by mistake. Sorry." He gave them to her.

"You were sleeping so hard, I didn't want to wake you by searching through your pockets," Tori said.

"It would've been okay. I wouldn't have minded being wakened.

We need to . . ."

"Talk. Yes." Tori reached in her purse and put money on a check that the waiter had left.

The smell of hamburgers and French fries filled the air, reminding Page that the last meal he'd eaten had been the night before, but food was the last thing he cared about as he followed her outside.

"Where's my car?" she asked in the parking lot.

"Over there. The second row."

More vehicles drove past, heading in the direction of the observation platform.

When Tori got behind the steering wheel, Page took the passenger seat, assuming they would sit in the parking lot while he did his best to get her to explain why she'd left him. Instead she started the car and steered toward the road. She found a gap in traffic and joined the vehicles going toward the observation platform. She didn't say a word.

"Please," Page said, "help me understand."

"I have breast cancer," Tori replied.

Page suddenly felt cold. In shock, he managed to ask, "How bad?"

"I'm having surgery this coming Tuesday. In San Antonio."

"San Antonio?"

"My Santa Fe oncologist set it up. The plan is to rest at my mother's house, but I couldn't bring myself to tell her over the phone.

I wanted to do it in person."

Page's balance tilted dizzily. "Why didn't you tell me? How long have you known?"

"The biopsy results came back a week ago."

"You had a biopsy?" Page asked. "I had no idea."

"In my oncologist's office. I didn't need to go to the hospital--she did it with a hypodermic. After you left for the airport on Tuesday, she called to tell me when the surgery was scheduled."

"So you just packed your bags and left?" Page couldn't adjust to his bewilderment. "Why didn't you talk to me about it? You know I'll give you all the support you need."

Tori drove slowly, held back by the line of cars. After a few minutes, she spoke again. "My doctor thinks we found the cancer in time.

She thinks surgery, combined with radiation, will get rid of it."

"Under the circumstances, that's the best news you could have."

"I didn't tell you about it because . . ." Tori drew a breath. "Because I'm tired of feeling alone."

"Alone?" Page felt something in him plummet. "I don't understand."

"We live in the same house, but I'm not sure we live together. When you come home from work, I ask how your shift went, and you recite a list of crimes that you investigated."

"That's how my shifts usually go."

"It's the way you tell me, cold and flat, as if your shift happened to somebody else and you're disgusted with the world."

"Dealing with terrible things day after day has that effect."

"As often as not, after work you go to a bar and drink with other cops. Do you talk with them about the crimes you investigated?"

"It's not like group therapy or anything. We just drink a few beers and tell jokes or whatever."

"Lately you do it after every shift. When you finally get home, we eat something I made in the crockpot. Otherwise the food would burn or get cold because I never know when you'll actually come through the door. Instead of talking, we eat in front of the television.

While you keep watching television, I go to bed and read."

"But that's what you like to do," he protested. "You enjoy reading."

"I'm not trying to place blame," Tori said. "Each of us is who we are. On the days you're not working, you go to the airport. As you told me once, nonpilots think flying a plane is all about feeling free and enjoying the scenery. But you like to fly because there's so much involved in handling a plane, you can't think about anything else. You can't let the emotions of your job distract you while you're controlling the aircraft. That's your defense against the world.

"When I learned about my cancer, I imagined the clamped-down look you'd get when I told you--the look you always get when you have emotions you don't want to deal with. I decided I couldn't go on that way. If I had a disease that might kill me, I didn't want to feel alone any longer. Going to the airport is your escape. Tuesday morning, after my doctor called, I decided to escape in a different way."

The car became silent.

Needing to distract himself, Page looked toward the sky, where clouds drifted in from the east. He glanced to the right. Beyond a barbed-wire fence, he saw the collapsed, rusted hangars from the military airstrip that had been shut down at the end of World War II.

Vehicles were parked along the fence. Ahead, the procession continued, but some of the cars turned into the opposite lane and parked along the other side of the road. A glance toward the side mirror revealed cars stretched out behind the Saturn, some of which were pulling off and parking wherever they found gaps.

Tori broke the silence. "That's why I grabbed at the memory of the lights. When I sat in that coffee shop outside El Paso and noticed Rostov on the map, the excitement of seeing those lights came back to me. Before I knew it, I couldn't wait to get here and see them again.

It's been a long time since I felt that kind of emotion."

"I feel as if I'm being compared to the way your father behaved that night."

"Not at all. You're a kind, decent man. My father was impatient and harsh. You're nothing like that. But I need someone who feels positive."

Page thought of the five children and the female driver who'd died in the head-on collision. He thought of the driver of the gasoline tanker who'd burned to death. He thought of his friend who'd been shot to death by the man who'd crashed into the gasoline tanker.

He couldn't free his memory of all the people who'd been shot the previous night.

And now Tori had cancer.

"Feel positive?" He shook his head. "I'm not sure I know how to do that. But I saw the lights, too. That's got to count for something."

Tori didn't respond.

"We'll watch them together," Page said, hoping. "I'll learn from you."

He heard the distant rumble of helicopters. Ahead, three of them hovered a safe distance apart. The choppers all had large letters on the undersides identifying the television stations to which they belonged. Their nose cameras were aimed at the line of vehicles.