“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 tem- per, 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.”
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 re- member. 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.”
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 an- other 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. Keep the lights a secret. Let people discover them if they’re meant to.”
“If they’re meant to?” Tori asked.
“Do you think these people deserve to see the lights? Most can’t. The others aren’t capable of appreciating what they’re lucky enough to see.” There was a tone in her voice that Page hadn’t heard before.
People filled the road, complaining about the tall barricade. Harriett was forced to stop the truck.
“Quit blocking traffic!” Page heard Medrano yell.
Reluctantly the crowd parted.
Harriett drove on, passing the parked cars. Beyond barbed-wire fences, scrub grass stretched in both directions. Five miles later, she steered toward a gate on the left. Page got out, opened the gate, waited for the truck to drive through, then resecured the gate.
They drove along a dirt road. The heat of the day had dried the puddles from the previous night’s storm. Dust rose in small clouds to mark their passing. The rugged grassland extended toward the distant mountains, the vast area so flat and treeless that only the grazing cattle provided variation in the landscape.
Wait, Page thought, peering into the distance. Something’s out there.
He saw a speck at the end of the road. Leaning forward, he tried to identify what it was. As the truck drove nearer, the speck became larger.
“It’s a building,” Tori said, curious.
“Why do I feel like I’ve been here before?” Page frowned, recalling his sense of déjà vu when he’d flown over the cattle and the windmill on his approach to Rostov. He’d also felt it when he’d first driven along the town’s main street.
The building became more identifiable-and more puzzling. It was an impressive three-story ranch house. A covered porch stretched along its wide front. Several chimneys projected from its roofline. A square tower rose on the right corner, ending in a cupola that made the house look like a castle. But as majestic as the place appeared, it had a brooding, gothic quality.
“I’ve seen this house before,” Tori told Page. Abruptly she made the connection. “Birthright.”
“Of course!” Page said. “That’s why everything looked familiar when I flew here. This is the house Captain Medrano was talking about, the one Mullen took the tour to see.”
Page remembered when a restored version of Birthright had been shown in theaters to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. He and Tori had heard so much about the classic film-which had seldom appeared on television-that they’d made a point of seeing it.
“We love that movie,” Tori said.
“Yeah, it really makes an impression,” Harriett replied, the house becoming more distinct as she drove toward it. “People here in Texas sure admired it. They couldn’t stand the novel, which they thought looked down on them, but they felt that the movie showed their strength and determination, not to mention the vastness of the countryside. No fake-looking computer effects in those days. When you saw a hundred thousand head of cattle, every one of them was real. The miles and miles of ranchland. The endless sky. I don’t think a movie has ever looked so big. As big as the state. And the actors matched the bigness of the movie. James Deacon, Veronica Pageant, Buck Rivers. Legends.”
Page stared toward the looming house. Its dark, weathered wood reinforced the feeling of gloom that the structure exuded. Soon the truck was close enough for him to see that some of the boards had fallen, that there were gaps in the wall, that the porch was in danger of collapsing.
“Doesn’t anybody maintain it?” Tori asked in surprise.
“The movie people left it here, and the family that owns the ranch took care of it for a while, but then they got distracted,” Harriett answered. “And anyway, who would they have maintained it for? It’s not as if they wanted tourists tromping over their land and leaving the gates open so their cattle would wander down the road and maybe get hit by a car. By the time the parents died, the children had pretty much forgotten about it. When they finally remembered, it was too late. Now the place is in such bad shape that it can’t be repaired with- out basically being rebuilt.”
She stopped the truck at decaying steps that led up to collapsed boards on the porch. The ornate front door looked as if it was about to topple from its rusted hinges.
Page got out of the truck, his sneakers crunching on pebbly dirt. He helped Tori down and watched Harriett come around to join them. She put on her cowboy hat. The sun was intense enough that Page wished he’d thought to bring a baseball cap. Tori continued to wear hers, concealing most of her red hair.
“In the movie, a lawn was here,” Page said.
“And a curved driveway bordered by flower beds,” Tori added. “A cattle stampede tears it all up. Veronica Pageant and Buck Rivers put it all back together. Then they do it again when there’s a tornado. Then there’s a terrible drought, but somehow they keep building their empire.”
“Texas determination,” Harriett said.
“And James Deacon’s the white trash they humiliate, until he strikes oil and uses his money and power to get even with them. At one point, he drives his battered old truck across the lawn. He’s covered with oil from his first well. He jumps out and punches Rivers.” Page looked around. “But I don’t see any oil wells.”
“Forty miles from here,” Harriett said. “That’s where you’ll find them. One reason the movie was made here is that this isn’t oil country and there weren’t any wells to interfere with the illusion that this is what Texas looked like a hundred years ago, before the oil boom.” She paused. “I said there weren’t computer effects, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t any movie magic. Walk around the house, and you’ll see what I mean.”
Curious, Page and Tori did what Harriett suggested. Stepping around the corner, Page gaped. All he faced was more grassland.
“There isn’t any house,” Tori said in astonishment.
“The only part they built was the front.” Page couldn’t get over his surprise. “In the movie, you feel like you can walk right into the place.”
“Seeing’s believing,” Harriett tol
d them. “But what you see isn’t al- ways what’s real.”
Like the cuttlefish, Page thought. “You’re making a point about the lights?”
“Eye of the beholder,” Harriett answered. “Sometimes we see what we want to see, sometimes what we ought to see, and sometimes what we shouldn’t see.”
“I don’t understand.”
“A lot of people in town were extras in the crowd scenes in Birthright, back when they were kids. Ask around, and you’ll hear all kinds of stories about what it was like to have movie stars walking the streets of Rostov.”
“What does that have to do with the lights?” Tori asked.
“For about three months, the stars lived right here in town. Rostov was even smaller back then, and everything the actors did was pretty much public knowledge, not that any of it was terribly shocking. There was so little to do that the film crew-including the actors- played baseball every Sunday afternoon against a team the townsfolk put together. People invited the actors to barbecues. Every evening, the director put up an outdoor screen and showed everyone the foot- age he’d shot a couple of days before. Did you know that all three of the stars were only twenty-three years old?”
“Twenty-three?” Tori echoed. “But they look like they’re in their forties and fifties for half the film.”
“The director had two choices: hire forty-year-old actors and use makeup so they’d look young in the early parts of the movie, or else hire young actors and use makeup to age them. The fame of Deacon, Pageant, and Rivers made him decide to appeal to a younger audience. The acting and the makeup were so brilliant, they convinced you that what you saw on the screen was real.”
“More illusion,” Page said. “Okay, I get it.”
“That’s not the point I wanted to make, though,” Harriett continued. “Deacon starred in only three movies. First, he played the younger brother in a family that runs a fishing boat in northern California.”
“The Prodigal Son,” Tori said.
Harriett nodded. “Then he made the street-gang movie, Revolt on Thirty-second Street. And finally Birthright. He filmed all three back- to-back, but he died in a car crash before any of them were released. He never had a chance to find out how big a star he was.”
The Shimmer Page 18