Pretty simple, Kelly, but you got to get it right. This lever operates the safety rods locking the traps. Four traps up there, and you have to get the right one right, or somebody’s going to have a nasty spill. We use movable scaffolding down here to get the actors up topside, usually after setting off a flash bomb to distract the audience.…
The entire rig had been designed by an old vaudevillian stagehand, a gnome named Chucky who had died last year at the age of ninety-seven. Chucky swore that Helldorado’s stage was as good as anything at Hollywood’s Pantages Theater, and for all she knew, he was right.
Now, all that was required was an accurate memory of the machinery’s operation. The four ring-pins were intersected by a two-foot red metal rod, locking them tight into a safety bar. She tugged at the rod helplessly. It wouldn’t move. She set her feet, pushed with her legs, and one inch at a time, the rod slid out, leaving the row of ring-pins armed and ready.
Wisher had reached the center of the stage, then stopped and looked almost precisely at her hiding place.
“Why don’t you just come on out?”
Then he glanced away. He’d been bluffing. He turned around, uncertain, and took a step backward—
He stepped on the square. She pulled the #4 Center Stage ring, and the floor opened beneath him. Wisher gave a single despairing wail, flailed his arms and fell.
Stairs. The stairs to the basement were only a dozen paces behind her. Kelly ran for them. Without seeing him, she heard Woodcock run for the other side. There are more stairs on the other side.
Her old legs seemed to be moving in slow motion as she rushed down.
The basement was fourteen feet below the stage. Wisher was sprawled with arms and legs splayed at swastika angles.
The gun wasn’t in his hand. She searched desperately, hearing Woodcock’s footsteps as he charged down his side of the stairs—
Kelly, frantic, saw Wisher’s gun, lying just in a shadow. She dove and landed on a feed bag, the breath slamming from her body.
Woodcock dropped into a single-knee shooting position. Kelly rolled once to get a clear shot. Upside down, she fired twice, the revolver’s roar deafening in the basement’s confined space. Woodcock toppled over, mouth sagging in surprise, left eye socket a bleeding pulp.
She rolled off the bag, ribs aching, eyes cold, and limped over to Wisher. He was sprawled in partial shadow, twisted like a broken pretzel. His face oozed perspiration in the dim light. Absurdly, she had a sudden, vivid memory of their first meeting, in New York, almost two decades ago. Clean, erect, alert at Marcus’s side. Marine Lieutenant Charles Wisher at your service ma’am! “I think … I think something’s busted,” he gasped.
She cocked her head a bit sideways. “Let’s find out.” Very deliberately, she ground her heel into his knee.
He stared at her without making a sound. No pain. Too bad.
“Not your leg, Charlie. Your back.”
“Help me.…”
“First you’re going to tell me what it’s all about.”
He hesitated, but she raised her foot, and set it on his hip, rocking gently. This time he screamed.
“It was Marcus,” he gasped. “He went bad, Kelly. We just did what we had to do.”
“Bad how?”
“He was killing women. We didn’t know how many. But it had to stop. We had to stop him.”
“How many women?”
“We don’t know. Angel guessed more than ten.”
“Angel guessed more than ten.” Did you really have to guess, Angel? Was Alex alone those nights? Somehow I think you had a very damn exact count. And when someone tumbled wise you knew the game was up, and it was time to cut losses. You son of a bitch.
“So … you killed Marcus?”
He blinked. “You know what he meant to people. If it had ever come out … so we sabotaged the plane. And now this reporter is stirring it up.” Charlie Wisher bit his lip. “Sweet goddamn, it hurts.”
“Just a little longer now,” Kelly said. “What did you think I told the reporter?”
“The kids. Those fucking kids.”
She could hardly stand. Her anger was so intense it was a physical weight, bowing and bending her, slowing thought and action. It felt as if her nerves were frying.
“What about the kids? I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
Wisher gazed up at her. “I can’t feel any … any…”
But before he could finish, Charlie Wisher’s eyes glazed, becoming as still and expressionless as ice cubes.
* * *
Feeling a million years old, Kelly climbed up out of the basement.
Diablo’s streets were dark and empty. If anyone had heard the gunfire, well, that was just some of the deputies practicing on the Helldorado stage, don’t you know. She felt dislocated, floating above herself as she hobbled back to her house.
There she found Bobby Ray on the floor, his spilt blood congealing around him. She crawled up next to him, lay his head in her lap. The entire world seemed a little dark and unfocused. The wound on her head hurt horribly, and in a distant way, she realized that she was probably going into shock.
“What do I do, Bobby Ray?” Her whisper seemed to echo in the dead, cold house.
She had just killed two deputies. What was the conspiracy? How far did it go, and who else was involved? D’Angelo had set this up, all of it. If she called the police, exactly who would she call? And what would they do?
Why hadn’t that bastard Angel come personally?
Because he has other business. With the reporter. With “those fucking kids” at Charisma Lake.
That’s where she would find Angel, before the police found her, and Bobby Ray. Before everything else, anything else, there was something she had to do.
Still moving like a sleepwalker, Kelly levered herself up. “Sleep easy, honey,” she said. “I swear I’ll kill him. I’ll kill that son of a bitch.”
She went out the back door to Bobby Ray’s shed. She dialed the combination and opened it very quietly.
No light. No sound. There, on the bench, stock ready for refitting, sat Bobby Ray’s Sharps rifle. She removed it from the vise, and grabbed a box of cartridges.
She kissed her fingertips, still moist with her husband’s blood, and brushed them across the gold framed portrait of the two of them: a Western-style shoot outside of Fort Worth. They bore wide smiles and first prize medals.…
And then she was gone.
74
By one in the morning, the music had died.
In safety-minded pairs and bunches the kids drifted off to their cabins, waving sleepy good-byes.
Vivian walked hand in hand with Renny, feeling more than ever like just another dreamy, love-struck camper.
She dropped his hand with awkward speed as Patrick and Frankie approached. Patrick had his arm around Destiny (as if she couldn’t see that coming!). Frankie Darling stood as tall as she’d ever seen him, Jessica the blue-eyed firebomb super-glued to his side.
“Hey, Mom,” Patrick said, and managed a smile. Vivian guessed that he would have hugged her if that wouldn’t have seemed terminally uncool.
“Can I talk to you for just a moment?” she said.
“Sure. I’ll catch up, guys.”
“G’night, Mrs. Emory.”
She turned to Renny. “This will just take a second.” She walked a dozen paces with Patrick, so that they stood by the stone-walled water fountain beneath an arching vine-wreathed trellis.
“You saw me dancing with Mr. Sand, didn’t you?”
Patrick nodded. “Umm-hmm.” His eyes were studiedly neutral.
“I don’t want you to be mad with me,” she said.
Patrick closed his eyes, and Vivian had the sense that he was playing mental tapes, arranging thoughts, centering himself before speaking. Finally, and in a very controlled voice, he began. “You and Dad … had been pretending for a long time.” Vivian’s eyes watered. He had paraphrased her own thoughts, so p
recisely that he might as well have read her mind.
“You took him back, for one night. You tried to save his…” he bit down hard on the words. “You tried to keep him from fighting. It didn’t work.”
Vivian looked down at her boy child, speechless.
“Not everything works out like we hope, Mom.”
“You don’t hate me?”
“Mom,” Patrick said, as if she were the child. “Don’t trip, okay?”
He looked over at Renny, who was carefully studying something in the opposite direction. “He really likes you,” Patrick said doubtfully. “Hope he’s not an asshole.”
Vivian was speechless now. Patrick gave her a quick, ultrauncool hug, and then rabbited after his friends.
Vivian rejoined Renny, who walked her to her cabin. She sagged against the door. “I had a great evening,” she said.
“Me too. Janie’s letting me bunk with the guys.”
“The counselors?”
“No, the boys. Sioux cabin.”
“Oh, the boys!” she giggled. “That should be an experience.”
Her giggle quieted, and something shut behind her eyes, leaving only the great and aching sweetness of her face, the clarity of her smile. “Let’s take it slow, all right?” She inhaled deeply, turned her face up toward the stars. “This is like some kind of fantasy. It isn’t my world. Nothing but strangers, except for the kids. I don’t know who I am up here.”
“Did you know who you were down there?”
She smiled. Sand felt a great, aching flame growing within him. He longed to touch her, to taste her smile, an urge so strong it was almost a physical pain.
Instead, he lifted and kissed the tips of her fingers.
“Thank you,” he said, “for the best night of my life.” He took her chin, very slightly turned it until one cheek faced him, and brushed it with his lips. Then before he could say or do anything that he might regret later, he turned and joined the Sioux.
75
Kelly Kerrigan drove hard, taking poorly-lit back roads north and west to Prescott. She didn’t know where she was, or what she was doing. She had wrapped a scarf around her head, wadding tissue against her wound in a makeshift bandage, but blood still ran into her eyes. She wiped at it without conscious thought. It took all of her concentration to keep her attention on the road, which continued to flicker in and out in front of her, like a twisted yellow ribbon blowing in the night wind. Her headlights pierced that darkness, showed the drop-off to the left down to the valley floor. One part of her wearied of weaving through those mountains, moving in and out, back and forth, seeking to find her way.
She knew a way to find swift and certain peace: just turn the wheel sharply to the left, plunging through the low metal guard railing. She would sail out into space, plummet into a well of darkness. In the depths of that well waited her beloved Bobby Ray, his arms outstretched. But she couldn’t do that yet. Not yet—there remained a terrible task to complete. She couldn’t quite remember what it was. She knew that she had a concussion. She knew that there was something wrong with her, but she couldn’t stop. Not now, not until she had confronted Angel, and wrung the truth from him.
Her hands clutched the steering wheel as if they were holding onto a life line. Another mile rolled up on the odometer, and then another. Further and deeper into her private hell she plunged. She had no illusions about where she was: some place beyond herself, beyond legality. She only knew that there was something to be done, that the spirit of her dead husband would never rest until she had accomplished that goal.
Then Bobby Ray could rest, and if necessary, she could join him.
76
Silent shadows slipped among the cabins that night.
The shadow-makers were noiseless, purposeful. They signaled to each other with hand gestures. When one pair moved forward, the others covered.
They positioned themselves around the boys’ cabin, and then exploded through the front doors, banging pans in a hellish cacophony.
They turned the lights on. Janie, Ocean and Denise looked at the empty room, baffled—
And then were struck from behind by a dozen balloons filled with water and shaving cream.
They’d been outflanked! The boys had enlisted Renny in their efforts, sworn him to secrecy, and made stealthy preparations in the dead of night.
The first wave of counselors recoiled, but Janie burst out with the most dreaded secret weapon known to man or child: a Super-Soaker charged with ice water. The battle cry went up, counselors versus kids, an ambush that got ambushed. The kids, not at all the innocent, helpless victims that the counselors had anticipated, fought back savagely. The cabin war raged into the night.
Renny couldn’t believe how much fun it was.
* * *
Up in the western hills, Tristan D’Angelo was peering through a sniper scope, laughing himself sick. He had to admit the water balloon ambush had been fun to watch. In another world, another life, he wouldn’t have minded being down there with them, or for that matter having some of these kids watching his back in a hot zone.
Have a good night, little soldiers, he thought. It’s the last one.
* * *
Kelly Kerrigan parked her car down on an overgrown utility access road north of the lake. She had studied three different maps before finding one with the information she needed.
Obtaining the maps had been almost as great a challenge as the eight-hour drive. She had only fingers to comb her hair, and a rest-stop paper towel to mop crusted blood from her face. Despite her efforts, she must have looked like day-old death when she limped into the Arco station in a micro-town called Dewey. The station attendants stared at her as she fumbled through the map rack, asking if she needed any assistance.
She tried to reassure them, but they frowned as she smoothed her crumpled five dollar bill on the counter. She collected her change, and left without a backward glance.
Kelly checked herself in the car mirror, and saw the reason for their consternation: her scalp wound was oozing blood again, and she hadn’t even felt it. The left side of her face was numb. She wiped the blood away with the side of her hand, climbed back in her jeep, and drove away.
The attendant had watched her as she left, perhaps wondering if she would weave in an alcoholic haze. His breath fogged the window.
She’d had sufficient presence of mind to travel the last quarter mile toward Charisma Lake without headlights, creeping at a walking pace, trusting to starlight and moonlight. She parked off the road, and waited there in the darkness, listening. What was out there? Who? Her head hurt abominably, ached and pulsed like the worst headache in history. She chewed another Tylenol, the bitter, powdery taste somehow making the pounding even worse before it began to improve.
It had taken her an hour to climb up a road barely delineated on the map, lugging her dead husband’s rifle case every inch of the way.
She felt like a ghost. Her wounds clouded logic, masked her fatigue and smeared her sense of loss into a gray blur that colored everything, disconnecting Kelly from her emotions. Tomorrow, perhaps, she would feel the pain, the fatigue, the loss. Today she barely felt the cold.
Every step was a grueling effort. What would have been fifteen minutes of brisk hiking for any healthy young person had taken her over an hour. But then she followed the thin, distant, delighted sounds drifting from south of the lake. Her senses were dulled to any sensation within herself, but seemed unnaturally responsive to the external world.
She finally reached the lake, paused to rest her shaking legs, then began to trace her way around the periphery. She saw something in the distance that she thought might have been a lit cigarette. She only saw it once, briefly, but that was enough. Kelly backed up, found deep shadows where two trees grew close enough to lean one upon another, and burrowed into the bushes. She wrapped herself in the blanket that had covered the backseat of her car.
She wanted D’Angelo. He was here, or here she would find men who could lea
d her to him. Then she would see what happened.
Then they would all see.
77
Sand was heading back to the cabins with the rest of the campers when it happened.
Wet, cold, shivering but delighted, some kids had gone to the showers to clean off before popping back into bed. Renny was coming back from those showers, towel draped over his shoulders, when he almost bumped into Vivian going the other way. She wore a white terrycloth robe, a big fluffy thing that made her look about fifteen years old.
She smiled at him shyly, said “Good night,” then glanced around—went up on tiptoe, and pressed her lips quickly and firmly against his. A promise of a promise. Then, fleet as a fawn, she was gone.
* * *
Renny awakened four hours later, feeling utterly rested, ready for the day. He wondered what had awakened him, and realized that two of the other Sioux boys were awake as well.
“What are you doing?” he whispered.
“The lake,” they said. “Watching the sunset.”
He was a lifelong city rat, but something inside him itched to find out what this was about. He donned shirt and pants and shoes and followed them.
Their flashlight beams stabbed the early morning air as they went. By the time they got up to the lake, he was perspiring a bit, just enough to make the cold more piercing.
The sunrise. Occasionally when he was wrung out from exercise, food garnered an extra sharpness, an extra edge of flavor that transported the taste buds into a realm far beyond the reach of spices and sauces, however delicate or carefully applied. Those states were always memorable, and never predictable. And he had entered into one now.
Something had shifted inside him, he was sure, because this sunrise seemed so much more than the one he had seen just yesterday, driving up over the mountains.
Perhaps he was just a little different now. Sand had his story, he knew it, and he could run with it, and it would make him. And there was a woman he had waited for six years to kiss, and her taste still lingered on his lips.
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