But somehow—he had no idea how—somehow, sitting here in his car, he had felt his way into the mind of the Shadowman and there was no separation there. That heart of poison that had shot those children to death off China Beach, that was the self-same heart that wanted Julie Wyant now, that needed Julie Wyant. Pomeroy had misunderstood what he’d overheard. The Shadowman hadn’t hurt Julie and then begged her to be his: It had all been one thing. Hurting her had been his manner of courtship and his love…His love would be an act of destruction; the destruction of her would be the token of his love. It was as if Rage itself had come to adore someone, as if Murder itself had, as if the Devil had. Weiss snorted softly at the melodrama of that thought. But it was unsettling. The Devil in love. What would the Devil do on his wedding night, after all? And what wouldn’t the Devil do to claim his bride?
He cursed. His car slid down the freeway ramp to the misty base of the skyline. Angrily, he turned the wheel, turned it hard so that the tires squealed under him. He headed along Market Street—but not to his apartment now, not to the scotch he was way past ready for. He headed to his office. To his computer, to his phone.
Because now, slowly, finally, it was beginning to come to him. He was beginning to understand what would happen next.
Part Four
Hellfire
Forty-Eight
It was dark when they reached the killing place. They had been driving a long time.
Chris Wannamaker was just now coming around. Slumped in the BMW’s backseat, he was just beginning to feel the motion of the car. His eyes came slowly open, slowly closed. His big, muscular body felt floaty to him, strengthless. His head lay heavy against the window, too heavy to raise. His jaw hung loose, too heavy to shut. His eyes came slowly open again. He stared out at the night.
Flake was up front, behind the wheel. Goldmunsen was sitting behind him. One of Goldmunsen’s apelike arms lay lax across his middle. At the end of the apelike arm was an apelike hand. In the apelike hand was a gun, a Glock, pointed at nothing. Now, as Chris stirred, Goldmunsen smiled, the way people do when someone wakens. He shifted his hand to point the Glock at Chris.
Chris shifted again. He moaned. His head was starting to throb. He had a vague sense that something terrible was happening to him. He wanted it to stop. He wanted to close his eyes and open them and be at home in his bed. He tried it, closed his eyes again, opened them again. No. He was still in the car. The car kept moving. The miles unwound. The night closed in.
Chris tried to focus. He tried to see what was outside the window. There wasn’t much. He could make out the shapes of trees pressed black against the edges of the twisting road. Now and then he could see a paler black, a strip of sky, above them. They were in the forest somewhere. He was starting to feel afraid, more and more afraid. Something terrible was going to happen to him in the forest. There was something he had to do to stop it. There was something he had to do in the nick of time.
But time was up. Flake was turning the car off the road. Chris felt the tires bounce over dirt and gravel. He was jolted in his seat. Punch-drunk, he lifted his heavy head. He looked around him. He saw Flake driving. Goldmunsen smiling down at him. He saw the gun in Goldmunsen’s hand.
“Oh,” he said thickly. “No…”
It all swam back in on him. He was going to his own execution. Terror shuddered through him and his limbs went weak.
“No…no,” he said. “You have to…”
“Just park it here, this is good,” said Goldmunsen to Flake.
“Let me get a little more in, some CHIPs asshole doesn’t see us from the road,” said Flake over his shoulder.
“Yeah,” said Goldmunsen. “Okay. Go more in.”
Chris moved his hand to his throbbing forehead. For a moment, the interior of the BMW receded into fog and silence. Then it snapped back again, sickening and real.
“Oh God. Oh…”
“Hey, shut him up, will you,” said Flake.
“No, wait. Listen,” said Chris, holding his head. “This is…Listen to me.”
“Just take it easy,” said Goldmunsen amiably. “It’ll all be over in a couple of minutes.”
“But you’ve gotta…you’ve gotta listen.” Chris held his head. He tried to think. Something he had to do. The nick of time. The pain pulsed in his temple like a living thing and he couldn’t think and he was so afraid. “Listen.”
“It ain’t gonna help, my friend. We have our orders,” said Goldmunsen. “You know how it is, right? Just stay cool. We’ll make it real easy on you.”
Chris looked at him, blinked at him. The smiling gorilla face. “Goldmunsen,” he said. “Listen to me. Please…”
“Hey!” said Flake sharply, glancing up at Chris in the rearview as he drove. “What did the man just say to you? Huh? Shut up already.”
Goldmunsen shrugged. “See what we’re dealing with?” he said to Chris. “We don’t want to get Flake here angry. You know? He gets pissed, he starts in with the knife, it’ll get very messy.”
“Oh God, please…”
“I’m serious, you won’t like it. Just be a man about it and I’ll take care of you. Okay?”
A new wave of fear and weakness washed down over Chris. He swallowed hard. “You don’t understand,” he said.
Goldmunsen laughed. “Oh, we understand.”
“No, no, it’s…Oh God, you have to listen. I don’t want to die!”
“Well, you have to,” said Flake. “So take it like a man and shut up. Jesus.” He muttered, “Knock this fuck out again, would you?”
“Eh,” said Goldmunsen. “Then we gotta carry him all the way out there? Fuck that shit.”
The car stopped. Chris’s eyes went wide. He looked around the darkness desperately. It came back to him now. Fragments coming together in his mind like jigsaw pieces. “Wait! Please,” he whined. “It was Kennedy! That’s what I have to tell you. It’s all Kennedy.”
“I’m gonna cut this fuck, so help me,” said Flake.
“All right, all right,” said Goldmunsen. “Let’s all just try to stay cool and get this done in a professional manner. Pop the lock back here already, wouldja?”
Flake hit the switch. The back doors unlocked. Goldmunsen gestured with the gun.
“You get out on my side,” he said to Chris.
“It’s all Kennedy, I swear!”
But the hatchet-faced gorilla ignored him. He nudged the door open. Slid out of the car carefully, keeping the Glock on Chris the whole time. Flake got out too.
“Listen!” said Chris. “Kennedy! He did all this. He…oh…” He held his head. He tried to put the pieces together.
Goldmunsen beckoned with the gun. “Come on,” he said.
“Hurry the fuck up about it. Don’t make me climb in there,” said Flake. “I mean it. Let’s go.”
Chris stared wildly at the black bore of the gun barrel. He was too limp with fear to move, too limp even to speak anymore. But somehow there he was, sliding across the seat toward the beckoning gun as if he were a charmed snake.
He stood up into the cool mountain air. He was trembling all over. Dazed and weak.
“This isn’t right,” he managed to whisper. “This…It’s not right. It’s a mistake. Not…”
They were standing in a clearing in the forest. They were in the thick of the forest, and yet it was strange. In the moonlight, the things Chris saw confused him, disoriented him even more. Buildings. There was a line of what looked like old brick buildings, like the main street of an old Western town. They were two stories tall, most of them, with crescents rising at the top, or with indentations like a castle battlement. But, in fact, these were only the fronts of the buildings. Their windows were as hollow as the eyeholes of a skull, they went straight through, straight into the black woods behind them. It was just the shell of an old gold rush town left intact for the tourists but to Chris it seemed like the landscape of a nightmare, unreal. With his concussion, his terror, the weirdness of the place, he couldn’
t put everything together.
“Let’s go,” said Goldmunsen.
“Wait,” said Chris. “Listen. Kennedy…”
Casually, Goldmunsen slapped him with the gun. Chris staggered, went down on one knee. The sky, the trees, the buildings wheeled around him. His thoughts scattered like startled crows.
“This guy,” said Goldmunsen. “He’s just not paying attention. You know?” With a good-natured shake of his head, he clutched a handful of Chris’s hair and hauled him to his feet. He prodded him hard in the ribs with the gun barrel. “So now let’s go. All right?”
Chris’s mind reeled. Everything was confusion and terror. He began to stumble weakly toward the buildings. He began to whimper. “Please. Listen to me. Please. It’s a mistake. You have to listen….” He could barely speak, barely make his voice loud enough to be heard. He was whimpering and murmuring as if in prayer. “It was Kennedy. He was doing it the whole time. Kennedy and Kathleen.”
“What do you think?” said Goldmunsen behind him. “Think we can still get back before Lucky’s closes?”
“I don’t know,” said Flake. “I can’t think at all with this blabbering fuck going. Getting on my nerves. I got a mind to take a blade to him, really take some time about it.”
“He was spying on us,” whimpered Chris. “Somebody has to believe me. You have to. The whole time. Him and Kathleen. We gotta tell Mr. Hirschorn.”
“What blade? What’re you talking about?” said Goldmunsen to Flake. “Fuck the blade. I’m hungry. We do this, we go to Lucky’s, we get some prime rib. You can take a blade to that.”
“Eh,” said Flake. “I’m just saying.”
“You’re always saying. You got sadistical tendencies. I mean it. You should have that looked at.”
“Eh.”
Chris was remembering now. It was coming back to him. The handheld computer. The e-mail. He found the right words. “He’s a detective. That’s it,” he said under his trembling breath. “Kennedy’s a private detective.”
He tried to look around but Goldmunsen stuck him with the gun again. “Keep going.”
Chris stumbled forward. “No, but listen, Goldmunsen. Flake. Listen. Kennedy’s a private detective, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“Jesus Christ, somebody shut this fuck up already,” said Flake.
“Ah, leave him alone,” said Goldmunsen. “Think of it from his side.”
“I mean it though. I won’t be responsible. What the fuck is he saying now?”
“I don’t know. He says Kennedy’s a detective.”
“Oh, right. What’re we, idiots?”
“Let him talk.”
“He thinks Mr. Hirschorn didn’t check him out?”
“He’s gotta say something. Leave him the fuck alone.”
“Sheezus!” said Flake.
The skull-eyed brick storefronts closed around them. An owl hooted in the woods beyond. Crickets and ciccadas set up a steady chirp all around them. And just as steady now, Chris’s whimper ran on.
“No, it’s true! Listen, listen. Kennedy’s a private detective. Please. He’s with an agency. Um…Weiss. The Weiss Agency down in San Francisco. It was on his thing, his thing, his machine, his little computer. He sent them an e-mail.”
There was a break in the line of buildings, a jagged gap in the brick. Chris stepped through it, prodded by the gun against his spine. Goldmunsen stepped through after him. Flake stepped through.
“Listen to this shit,” Flake muttered. Then: “Hey, fuckhead, what’re you talking about? What e-mail?”
“Jesus Christ, leave him alone, would you,” said Goldmunsen. “You’re just tormenting him.”
“No, no, I want to hear this,” said Flake, amused. “Just how stupid does he think we are? Kennedy sent an e-mail?”
Chris managed to raise his voice a little. “To the Agency. The Weiss Agency. I swear it to God.”
“Oh, you swear it to God, huh?” said Flake ironically. “What, he showed you this? You saw this?”
“It was on his handheld.”
“Oh right. His handheld. So where’s that? Let’s see. You show me now.”
Chris’s terror deepened. His muscles felt like water. Why had he left the handheld behind? How could he have done that? What had he been thinking? “No, but see, I thought, I didn’t…”
“Oh, oh, you thought, you didn’t, you thought,” said Flake with a laugh. “You thought what? You thought you’d bullshit us ’cause we’re idiots. Listen to this fuck. Can you believe this?”
“Hey, what time you think the kitchen closes at Lucky’s?” Goldmunsen wondered aloud.
“What?” said Flake, distracted. “I don’t know. Ten? How the fuck should I know? Forget Lucky’s. You got your brain in your fucking stomach.”
“My brain in my stomach,” said Goldmunsen. “Get me some fucking prime rib, I’ll put my brain back in my dick where it belongs.”
The ghost town fell away behind them. The tree line loured only a few yards before. Chris approached it, step by stumbling step. It was a black maw, a thousand-mile grave, waiting to swallow him. He went on babbling out his story. He hardly knew what he was saying anymore. They wouldn’t listen. Everything just kept happening. He couldn’t make it stop. His wide eyes darted here and there. Whatever they fell on seemed weirdly sharp and clear. The trees: the trunks, the branches of the trees. The starry indigo of the night. The grass and his feet moving on the grass. And under the pale silver moonglow: an opening into the woods. Waiting to swallow him. A trailhead. The path to his place of execution.
They reached it. Chris wanted to stop. He wanted to turn, to fight—to run, at least—before the woods took him in forever. Instead, he just shuffled miserably down the trail. The forest closed dark and cool around him. It all just kept happening and he couldn’t stop it.
“It was Kathleen,” he said bitterly, his voice breaking, a line of spittle spilling from the corner of his mouth, tears spilling from his eyes. “It was my wife. She’s the one. She was listening. You gotta believe me. She told him everything. That’s how he knew.”
“This is good,” said Goldmunsen after a while. “All right, Chris, you can hold up. This is far enough.”
Chris obeyed as if he were hypnotized. He stood there crying, his broad shoulders slumped, his muscular arms hanging limp. Through his tears, he saw the tangled forest. It looked so wonderful to him, so wonderfully real. The air was so cool and crisp and the night so deep. All he wanted out of life just then was more life. The tears and snot ran down his face. He waited to be shot in the back of the head. He babbled, “She went to bed with him, that’s what happened. See? He’d fuck her and she’d tell him, that’s how he knew. That’s how he knew all along. Oh please, please…” He began to blubber wordlessly.
Then suddenly, the snap of the Glock behind him as Goldmunsen checked the round in the chamber. Hot piss went down Chris’s leg, soaked his jeans. He shook and sobbed.
“Please, please, please, oh, please, I swear to God…”
“Wait a minute—what?” muttered Flake.
Goldmunsen hoisted the gun. Pointed it squarely at the nape of Chris’s neck.
“Hoh! Hoh, hoh, hoh!” said Flake. “Wait a minute? Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“What he just said. Did he just say what I think he said?”
“I don’t know. What did he say?” said Goldmunsen impatiently, pointing the gun. “He said, ‘Please, please, please.’ What’s he gonna say?”
“No, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait,” said Flake. “Kennedy was fucking his wife? Is that what he said?”
“I don’t know. Who gives a shit? Can I do this already?”
“Hold on a minute, hold on.” Flake held up a hand to keep Goldmunsen from firing.
Goldmunsen rolled his eyes. “Shit.” He gestured with the gun. “I’m fucking starving here.”
“Hey,” Flake said to Chris’s back. “Hey, asswipe. What’re you fucking talking about?
Kennedy was fucking your wife, is that what you’re saying?”
Chris heaved a breath. He slumped with his mouth open, sobbing hard. Waiting for the gunshot, he stared through his tears, entranced with the beautiful moonlit woods. The seconds were so long he began to hold out hope that one of them would go on forever. “Fucking my wife,” he murmured distantly, answering Flake without really knowing he was. “That’s how he knew, that’s right. That’s how he knew.”
“So Kennedy’s a private detective and he’s fucking your wife and she’s telling him what you and Mr. Hirschorn are talking about. That’s what you’re saying,” said Flake, leaning forward as if he didn’t trust his ears. “That’s what you’re telling me?”
“We could save the day,” Chris whimpered to himself. “We could save…Mr. Hirschorn…would be happy…”
“Hey!” said Flake. He slapped Chris in the back of the head.
Chris thought that was it—the gunshot. He cried out in a high-pitched voice, stumbled forward and fell to his knees, weeping. He was surprised to find he was not yet dead and thought wildly that now they would shoot him again and finish the job and he hoped they’d do it quickly before there was any pain.
“Hey!” said Flake again. He grabbed Chris by the ear. He yanked Chris’s head back until the bigger man was staring up at him. The wiry thug sneered down at Chris, his psycho eyes bright. “I’m talking to you, you dipshit. I’m asking you a question. What exactly are you saying here?”
His mouth hanging open, his face smeared with snot and tears, Chris stared up into the killer’s corkscrewed features. It took a moment, but then he understood. Flake was listening to him! Flake was listening and Chris was still alive! He gaped at Flake as if he were his loving mother.
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