The Shimmer (24 page)

"No," Page said. "If it hadn't been for me."

"I couldn't resist. They seemed to be calling me."

He considered what she'd said, then gave her an extremely direct look.

"Let's pack and get out of here. Not tomorrow. Right now. We can be at your mother's house by morning. Are you ready to do that?"

Tori lowered her head and didn't reply, in effect giving him an answer. He remembered what had happened in the field. After what she had said and done to him, he wasn't about to try to force her to leave.

He wasn't even certain he could force her to leave. So he came to a decision.

"In that case, I need to be a cop a while longer. This has gone way past the point where I can just let things keep controlling us. I'm going to find out what's going on."

Chapter 44.

Page jerked awake, struck anew by the stark reality of what Tori had told him about her cancer and by what had happened the night before.

So much to adjust to.

Sunlight crept past the cheap drapes, but he didn't feel at all rested, even though a glance at the bedside clock showed him that the time was 1:14 and that he'd slept another twelve hours.

This time Tori remained in her bed.

Groggy, he went into the bathroom, softly closed the door, and shaved, running the water as little as possible, trying not to make noise.

When he came out, Tori was putting on a pair of slacks.

"Sorry if I woke you," he said.

"It wasn't a good sleep."

"The same with me." He touched the shirt and jeans that he'd put on a hangar. "Still wet." He glanced down at the clothes he'd slept in.

Wrinkled, they continued to retain the odor of the fire two nights earlier.

"Looks like we need to do some shopping," Tori concluded.

When they stepped from the room and faced the harsh sunlight, Page was troubled by the number of vehicles streaming past the motel--many more than on the previous day. It took even longer for Tori to find a break in the traffic and steer the Saturn onto the road.

In town, the streets were filled with cars. All the parking spaces were occupied. Tori let Page out in front of a store called the Outfitter, where there were so many tourists that he had to wait fifteen minutes to pay for new clothes. It took another fifteen minutes to get into a dressing room. He put on a pair of pants, a T-shirt, and a shirt to wear over it--something that would conceal his handgun. When he came out with his old clothes in a shopping bag, he heard a customer talking to a female clerk.

"Do people really see lights around here?"

"Yes," the clerk answered. "But it's been years since I went looking for them."

"Aren't you curious what they are?" the customer asked.

"When I was a kid. But I got used to them."

As Page walked toward the front of the store, he heard another customer telling a different clerk, "My wife has diabetes. We heard this place makes miracles happen, like at Lourdes. If she sees the lights, she'll be cured."

Page went out to the sidewalk, where Tori was waiting with two sandwiches and two bottles of water from a restaurant next door.

Cured? he thought. Wouldn't that be nice?

They ate while they walked three blocks to the hospital. There Tori again paused nervously on the hot steps outside the entrance.

"Another day closer to the start of the rest of your life," Page tried to reassure her.

She took a breath and forced herself to go in.

Upstairs, in the brightly lit hallway, the sharp odor of disinfectant seemed stronger as they walked toward Costigan's room.

The chief 's familiar raspy voice came from it, telling someone, "God help us if the next riot spreads to town. How many people were injured?"

"Twenty-three," a different voice answered. "Twelve got gashed pretty bad on the barbed-wire fence."

"And the others?"

"Six were almost trampled to death. The rest were hurt in fights."

Page was uncomfortable eavesdropping. He motioned for Tori to follow him as he stepped into the doorway.

Their footsteps made a man turn in their direction. He was in his fifties, stocky, with a sunburned complexion. His sport coat had a Western cut and a zigzag design over the left and right breast. He wore a large belt buckle and held a cowboy hat.

"Sorry to interrupt," Page said. "We just wanted to see how Chief Costigan was doing."

"A lot better, thanks." Propped up in bed, Costigan looked less gray.

His mustache now had some contrast with his skin, and the heart and blood-pressure monitors were gone. The IV tube had been removed from his arm, although the thick bandage remained around his skull.

"They say they'll let me go home tomorrow as long as I remember not to bang my head against anything. This is Hank Wagner. He runs the drugstore in town. More to the point, he's also our mayor, which, at the moment, he wishes he wasn't."

Page shook hands with Wagner.

"Dan Page. This is my wife, Tori."

"The chief told me about you. You're the couple who saved those people on the bus Thursday night. You're the woman who . . ." Seeing her discomfort, the mayor said, "Well, we're grateful for what you did. Without your help, the situation could have been even worse."

He looked at his watch. "You'll have to excuse me. I need to get to an emergency town council meeting."

They watched him leave and then redirected their attention toward Costigan.

"Do you really feel better?" Tori asked.

"The headache's not as bad. And I don't have damned needles sticking into me. The doctor finally took me off a diet of broth and Jell-O." Costigan pointed toward Page's bruised mouth. "Looks like you're one of the people who got hurt last night."

"Things were a little crazy. Can I ask you a question?"

"You can ask." Costigan's voice hung in the air, suggesting, But I might not answer.

"The man who killed your father . . ."

For a moment, Costigan's pained eyes focused on the past. "What about him?"

"You said he'd come to Rostov only a couple of months earlier."

"He'd lost his job in Fort Worth when the factory he worked for moved to Mexico. He couldn't find anything else. One of his relatives lived here and managed to get him a job at the stock pens."

"You also said he was a drinker, that he got in arguments in bars.

His wife buttoned her collars and wore long sleeves even on hot days--to hide her bruises."

"That's right."

"In your place, given what happened to your father, I'd have looked into every aspect of the case. I'd have gone to Fort Worth and talked to people who knew the husband when the family lived there.

Did you find out if his behavior changed after he came to Rostov?"

Costigan considered him for a moment. "Yeah, you're a good police officer."

"Well, you know as well as I do, it's all about asking the right questions."

Costigan nodded. "I did some digging. The husband's behavior definitely got worse after he came here. He'd always had a short temper, especially when he drank, but here it became more extreme.

People who knew him in Fort Worth figured he got bitter about being forced to leave the big city and live in the middle of nowhere."

"Did you buy that theory?"

"I had a different one."

"And that's the real reason you wanted me to keep my gun in my suitcase when I went to the observation area to find out what Tori was doing there, isn't that correct?"

"Correct."

"What am I missing?" Tori asked.

Costigan looked at her. "People either like it here right away, or else they hate it. You saw that on Thursday night. Some got out of their cars and were open to seeing the lights, while others couldn't wait to get back on the road. A few were actually angry because they couldn't see what others claimed to see. It's like the way magnets can repel each other as much as attract."

"Did the man who shot your father ever go out there to look at the lights?" Page asked.

"He tried several times. He finally decided that the people who told him about the lights were trying to make a fool of him."

"And you were worried that if I didn't see the lights, I'd get angry-as angry as the man who shot your father."

"Yes."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"You wouldn't have understood what I was talking about. How could I possibly have explained it? I told you on the phone--you needed to see for yourself."

"Or not see," Page added.

Costigan made a gesture of futility. "There's no way to predict who'll see the lights and who won't, or how they'll react. Even those who don't see the lights . . ." The chief rubbed his bandaged forehead.

"Do you suppose it's possible to feel the lights without actually seeing them?"

"Yesterday you told us they were only a mirage caused by a temperature inversion," Tori reminded him.

"That I did."

"But now you seem to think they're a lot more."

"A temperature inversion. Sure. That's the rational explanation.

But one thing I've learned in more than twenty years as a police officer is that human beings aren't rational."

Chapter 45.

Harriett Ward's antiques store was crammed with browsers. After the glare of the afternoon sun, Page found the interior shadows soothing. He noted that a man had taken down one of the antique rifles Page had seen on the wall the evening before. The man worked the vintage firearm's lever and aimed the gun toward the ceiling.

"Just like the rifle James Stewart used in that Western," he told his female companion. "Winchester '73. Hard to imagine this was made just after the Civil War. What are they charging for it? Twenty-eight hundred dollars? My God, that's a steal!"

"But I don't think we can afford it," the woman said. "Gas and food cost so much. Next week Bobby's nursery school bill is due, and--"

"Hey, you don't see bargains like this every day. We'll put it on one of our credit cards."

Page looked toward the opposite side of the store and saw an older woman with short white hair and a leather vest: Harriett Ward. As he and Tori went over, she was talking to a couple about a wooden cabinet that had large iron handles on the doors.

"I found it in a village in Mexico. It's made of mesquite, which is about as hard as wood can get and not be like these metal handles."

She noticed Page and Tori and nodded. Five minutes later, she made her way over to them.

"I've never had so many people in the store at one time," she said.

"Well, at least there's an upside to what's been happening," Tori said.

"Everybody wants a twenty percent discount and free shipping.

Someone tried to buy the antique light fixtures and got upset when I said I needed them. Someone else got upset when I told her I didn't have a public restroom. She made a fuss when I wouldn't let her into my apartment so she could use my private bathroom. I'm glad for the business, but I'd forgotten how difficult people can be."

A woman approached them. She had big blond hair and wore an ornate costume that made her look like a country singer.

"Janice, thanks for coming in to help," Harriett said.

"No problem." The woman laughed and spread her sequined green skirt. "I figured I'd wear something the out-of-state customers will remember. They'll go home and say we all dress like we're in one of those old Westerns where everybody sang when they weren't shooting bad guys."

"Do you think you and Viv can handle the store for a while?"

"Of course. We know what to do."

"Just don't sell the light fixtures."

Laughing at what she thought was a joke, Janice went to greet a customer.

Harriett led Page and Tori through the door in back, entered her sparsely furnished living room, locked the door, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply. When she finally opened her eyes, she said, "You're here to talk about what happened last night?"

"If you're too busy, we can come back later," Tori said.

"No. Come with me--I want to show you something."

Chapter 46.

Harriett's pickup truck headed along the now familiar route.

"You're taking us back to the viewing area?" Page asked. He sat against the passenger door, with Tori next to him.

"Past it," Harriett answered.

Ahead, more cars were parked along both shoulders of the road.

Flatbed trucks had concrete barriers on them. A crane was lifting the barriers and placing them in a line along the entrance to the viewing area, forming a high wall. Two men in suits supervised the work.

Their hard hats contrasted with the cowboy hats of Medrano and another Highway Patrol officer.

"Looks like they're shutting the place off," Harriett said. "If they're smart, they'll take down the shelter altogether, along with the historical marker, and load the portable toilets onto those trucks. I never approved of what the county did here. The lights shouldn't be a tourist stop. I don't care about the business outsiders bring to town.