Mary saw Didi’s vacant stare. “What’re you thinking?”
“About Edward’s book,” Didi lied. At Mary’s sarcastic insistence Edward had told her what he was writing. “I’m not sure Jack would like that.”
“He’d want Edward executed,” Mary said. “No pity for traitors. That’s what he used to tell me.”
Didi looked at the child in Mary’s arms. An innocent, she thought. It was wrong for him to be there. Mary’s arms were folded around him as if he were cradled by vipers. “You said…you wanted to give Jack the baby.”
“I wanted to give him a gift. He always wanted a son. That’s what I was carrying for him the night I got hurt.” Was it true or not? She couldn’t remember exactly.
“So you’re going underground again?” Click, click, click the mental Rubik’s Cube at work.
“Tomorrow, after I take care of Edward. Then I’m heading for Canada. Me and Drummer.”
She’s going to kill Edward, Didi realized. And how long would it be before she had another fit and maimed or killed the baby? Click, click: more pieces, turning. Maybe Edward deserved to die. But he was a brother in arms, and didn’t that count for something? The baby certainly did not deserve the fate ahead of him. Click, click. Didi stared at her earth-mother hands, and realized more human clay lay at her mercy. “Mary?” she said softly.
“What?”
“I—” She paused. The secret thing had been a secret so long, it was reluctant to be born. But two lives—Edward’s and the infant’s—hung on her decision. “I… think I might…know where Jack is,” she said.
Mary sat without moving, her mouth partway open.
“I’m not sure. But I think Jack may be in California.”
No response from Mary.
“Northern California,” Didi continued. “A town named Freestone. It’s about fifty miles north of San Francisco.”
Mary moved: a shiver of excitement, as if all the blood had suddenly rushed back into her body. “That’s near the house,” she said. Her voice was tight and strained. “The Thunder House.”
Didi had never been to the Thunder House, but she knew about it from the other Storm Fronters. The Thunder House was located above San Francisco, hidden somewhere in the woods that rimmed Drakes Bay. It was the birthplace of the Storm Front, where the first members had signed their names in blood on the pact of loyalty and dedication to the cause. Didi understood it had been a hunting lodge abandoned thirty or more years earlier, and its name came from the continual thunder of the waves on the jagged rocks of Drakes Bay. The Thunder House had been the Storm Front’s first headquarters, their “think tank” from which all the West Coast terrorist missions had originated.
“Freestone,” Mary repeated. “Freestone.” Her eyes had lit up like spirit lamps. “Why do you think he’s there?”
“I’m a member of the Sierra Club. Five years ago there was a story in the newsletter about a group of people who were suing the town of Freestone for dumping garbage near a bird sanctuary. There was a picture of them in the council meeting. I think one of those people might have been Jack Gardiner.”
“You couldn’t tell for sure?”
“No. Just the side of his face was in the picture. But I cut it out and kept it.” She leaned forward. “Mary, I remember faces. My hands do, at least. Come to Ann Arbor and look at what I’ve done, and you tell me if it’s him or not.”
Mary was silent again, and Didi could see the wheels going around in her head.
“Don’t kill Edward,” Didi said. “Bring him with you. He’ll want to find Jack, too, for his book. If Jack is in Freestone, you can take both Edward and the baby to him, and he can decide whether Edward should be executed or not.” Buying time for Edward, she thought. And time for herself, to figure out how to get the child away from Mary.
“California. The land of milk and honey,” Mary said. She nodded, her smile beatific. “Yes. That’s where Jack would go.” She hugged Drummer, waking the baby with a start. “Oh, sweet Drummer! My sweet baby!” Her voice rose on a giddy note. “We’re going to find Jack! Going to find Jack and he’ll love us both forever, yes he will!”
“My plane leaves at one-thirty,” Didi told her. “I’ll go on ahead. You and Edward can follow me.”
“Yes. Follow you. That’s what we’ll do.” Mary beamed like a schoolgirl, and the sight ripped at Didi’s heart. Drummer began to cry. “He’s happy, too!” Mary said. “Hear him?”
Didi couldn’t bear to look at Mary’s face anymore. There was something of death in it, something brutal and frightening in its maniacal joy. Was this the fruit of what we fought for? Didi asked herself. Not freedom from oppression, but madness in the night? “I’d better get back to my hotel,” she said, and stood up from the sofa bed. “I’ll leave you my phone number. When you get to Ann Arbor, call me and I’ll give you directions to my house.” She wrote the number on a piece of Cameo Motor Lodge stationery, and Mary tucked it into her shoulder bag along with Pampers, formula, and her Magnum pistol. At the door, Didi paused. The flurries had ceased, the air still and heavy with cold. Didi forced herself to look into the big woman’s steely eyes. “You won’t hurt the baby, will you?”
“Hurt Drummer?” She hugged him, and he made a little aggravated squalling sound at being so rudely awakened. “I wouldn’t hurt Jack’s child, not for anything in this world!”
“And you’ll let Jack decide about Edward?”
“Didi,” Mary said, “you worry too much. But that’s part of why I love you.” She kissed Didi’s cheek, and Didi flinched as the hot mouth sealed against her flesh and then drew away. “You be careful,” Mary instructed.
“You, too.” Didi glanced at the infant again—the innocent in the arms of the damned—and she turned away and walked across the parking lot to her car.
Mary watched until Didi left, and then she closed the door. Behind it, she danced around the room with her baby, while God sang “Light My Fire” in her mind.
It was near the dawning of a brand-new day.
4
Crossroads
“JESUS,” BEDELIA MORSE SAID as she stood looking at her wrecked kitchen.
Afternoon sunlight slanted through the windows. The house was cold, and Didi saw the missing pane of glass in the back door. Dead leaves were scattered about, her antique kitchen table overthrown and two legs splintered. Someone had broken in, obviously, but the only sign of ransacking was in this room. Still, she hadn’t checked the pottery workshop yet. She looked out a window, could see the padlock and chain were secure. She didn’t have much of value; her stereo was still in the front room, and so was her little portable TV. She had no jewelry to speak of, just what she fashioned on the wheel. What, then, had the intruder been after?
Terror gripped her. She walked through a short hallway into her bedroom, where her unopened suitcase lay on the bed, and she opened the bottom drawer of her dresser. It was full of old belts, socks, and a couple of pairs of well-worn bell-bottom bluejeans. Her sigh of relief was explosive. Beneath the jeans was a photo album. Didi opened it. Inside were old, yellowed newspaper stories and grainy photographs, protected by cellophane. Storm Front Shootout in N.J., said one of the headlines. FBI Hunting Escaped Terrorists, another trumpeted. Storm Fronter Killed in Attica Riots, a third headline said. There were pictures of all the Storm Front members: old photographs, snapped when they were young. The picture of herself showed her beautiful and lithe, waving at the camera from astride a horse. It had been taken by her father when she was sixteen. The picture of Mary Terrell, standing tall and blond and lovely in the summer sunlight, hurt her eyes to look at, because she now knew the reality.
Didi turned carefully to the back of the album. The last few stories had to do with Mary’s kidnapping of David Clayborne. But before them was the article and black-and-white picture she’d clipped from the Sierra Club’s newsletter five years earlier. Citizen Group Saves Bird Sanctuary, said the headline. The article was five paragraphs long, and the pictur
e showed a woman standing at a podium before a council meeting. Behind her were seated several other people. One of them was a man whose head was turned to the right, as if talking to the woman beside him. Or avoiding the camera, Didi had thought when she’d first seen it. The lens had captured a portion of his profile—hairline, forehead, and nose. The names of the “Freestone Six,” as they called themselves, were Jonelle Collins, Dean Walker, Karen Ott, Nick Hudley, and Keith and Sandy Cavanaugh. All of Freestone, California, the article said.
Didi had always had an eye for faces: the curve of a nose, the width of an eyebrow, the way hair fell across a forehead. It was detail that made up a face. Attention to detail was one of her strengths.
And she was almost certain that one of those men— Walker, Hudley, or Cavanaugh—used to be known as Jack Gardiner.
She put the album back in its place and closed the drawer. There was no evidence that the drawer had been tampered with or the album discovered. She went into the front room and circled the telephone. Call the police? Report a burglary? But what, if anything, had been taken? She roamed around the house, checking closets and drawers. A metal box that held two hundred dollars in ready cash hadn’t been touched. Her clothes—Sears and Penney’s ready-to-wear—all remained on their hangers. Nothing was missing; even the pane of glass that had been cut from the door was lying on the kitchen’s countertop. She walked from room to room in the cottage, her Rubik’s Cube clicking but no solution in sight.
The telephone rang, and Didi picked it up in the front room. “Hello?”
A pause. Then: “Didi?”
If her heart had been pounding before, now her stomach seemed to rise to her throat. “Who is this?”
“It’s me. Mark Treggs.”
“Mark?” It had been five or six months since they’d last spoken. She always called him, not the other way around. It was part of their understanding. But something was wrong; she could hear the tension thick in his voice, and she said quickly, “What is it?”
“Didi, I’m here. In Ann Arbor.”
“Ann Arbor,” she repeated, dazed. Click, click, click. “What’re you doing here?”
“I’ve brought someone to see you.” In his room at the Days Inn, Mark glanced at Laura, who stood nearby. “We’ve been waiting for you to get back from your trip.”
“Mark, what’s this all about?”
She’s right on the edge, Mark thought. About to jump out of her skin. “Trust me, okay? I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. Do you believe that?”
“Somebody broke in. Trashed my kitchen. Jesus, I don’t know what’s going on!”
“Listen to me. Okay? Just settle down and listen. I wouldn’t hurt you. We go back too far. I’ve brought someone who needs your help.”
“Who? What are you talking about?”
Laura took a step forward and grasped the telephone before Mark could say anything else. “Bedelia?” she said, and she heard the other woman gasp at the unfamiliar voice speaking her name. “Don’t hang up, please! Just give me a few minutes, that’s all I’m asking.”
Didi was silent, but her shock was palpable.
“My name is Laura Clayborne. Mark brought me here to see you.” Laura sensed Didi was about to slam down the phone, the hairs stirring on the back of her neck. “I’m not working with the police or the FBI,” she said. “I swear to God I’m not. I’m trying to find my baby. Do you know that Mary Terrell stole my child?”
There was no answer. Laura feared she’d already lost Bedelia Morse, that the phone would crash down and she would be long gone by the time they drove to the house.
The silence stretched, and Laura felt her nerves stretch with it.
The kernel of a scream began to form, like a small dark seed, in Laura’s mind. What she didn’t know was that the same seed was growing in the mind of Bedelia Morse.
Finally, it came. Not a scream, but a word born from the seed: “Yes.”
Thank God, Laura thought. She had squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for Didi to hang up. Now she opened them again. “Can I come talk to you?”
Another silence as Didi thought it over. “I can’t help you,” she said.
“Are you sure about that? Do you have any idea where Mary Terrell might have gone?”
“I can’t help you,” Didi repeated, but she didn’t hang up.
“All I want is my baby back,” Laura said. “I don’t care where Mary Terrell goes, or what happens to her. I’ve got to have my child back. I don’t even know if he’s still alive or not, and it’s tearing me to pieces. Please. I’m begging you: can’t you help me at all?”
“Look, I don’t know you,” Didi replied. “You could be undercover FBI for all I know. I just got home from a trip, and somebody broke into my house while I was gone. Was it you?”
“No. But I saw the man who did.” And her body remembered the scuffle, too. Her right shoulder was a mass of blue-green bruises under her white blouse and cable-knit sweater, and another line of bruises ran across her right hip beneath her jeans.
“The man.” Didi’s voice had sharpened. “What man?”
“Let me come see you. I’ll tell you when I get there.”
“I don’t know you!” It was almost a shout of fear and frustration.
“You’re going to,” Laura answered firmly. “I’m giving the phone back to Mark now. He’ll tell you I can be trusted.” She handed the telephone to him, and the first thing he heard from Didi was an enraged “You bastard! You betrayed me, you bastard! I ought to kill you for this!”
“Kill me?” he asked quietly. “You don’t really mean that, do you, Didi?”
She gave an anguished sob. “You bastard,” she whispered. “You screwed me. I thought we were like a brother and sister.”
“We are, and that won’t change. But this woman needs help. She’s clean. Let us come see you,” Mark said. “I’m asking like a brother.”
Laura walked away from him, opened the curtain, and looked outside at the cold blue sky. She could see her car in the parking lot, its windshield marked with the GO HOME warning. She waited in anguish, until Mark put down the receiver.
“She’ll see us,” he told her.
On the drive to Didi’s house, Mark said, “Be cool. Don’t go all to pieces or start begging. That won’t help.”
“Okay.”
Mark touched the letters carved into the windshield. “Son of a bitch did a job on you, didn’t he? I knew that guy sounded weird. Plug in his throat.” He grunted. “I wonder what the hell he was after.”
“I don’t know, and I hope I never see him again.”
Mark nodded. They were a couple of miles from the cottage. “Listen,” he said, “there’s something I’ve got to lay on you. I told you about Didi having plastic surgery, remember?”
“Yes.”
“Didi used to be pretty. She’s not anymore. She had the plastic surgeon make her ugly.”
“Make her ugly? Why?”
“She wanted to change. Didn’t want to be what she was before, I guess. So when you see her, be cool.”
“I’ll be cool,” Laura said. “I’ll be damned cool.”
She slowed down and turned the BMW onto the house’s dirt driveway. As Laura drove up to the cottage, she saw the front door open. A plump woman wearing a dark green sweater and khaki trousers came out. She had long red hair that fell in waves around her shoulders. Laura’s palms were damp, her nerves raw. Be cool, she told herself. She stopped the car and switched off the engine. The moment had arrived.
Bedelia Morse stood in the doorway, watching, as Laura and Mark got out of the car and approached her. Laura saw the woman’s toadish face and crooked nose, and she wondered what kind of plastic surgeon would have consented to do such work. And what private torment had made Bedelia Morse want to wear a face that had been sculpted into ugliness?
“You shit,” Didi said to Mark, her voice cold, and she went inside without waiting for them.
In the cottage’s tidy front room, Didi
sat in a chair where she could look out a window at the road. She didn’t offer seats to Laura or Mark; she kept her gaze on him because she recalled Laura’s pain-stricken face from the newscasts and looking at her was difficult. “Hello, Didi,” Mark said, trying for a smile. “It’s been a long time.”
“How much did she pay you?” Didi asked.
Mark’s fragile smile evaporated.
“She did pay you, right? How many silver coins bought my head on a platter?”
Laura said, “Mark’s been a friend to me. He—”
“He used to be my friend, too.” Didi glanced quickly at Laura and then away. Laura Clayborne’s eyes were deep sockets, and they burned with a terrible intensity. “You screwed me, Mark. You sold me, and she bought me. Right? Well, here I am.” Didi forced her head to turn, and she stared at Laura. “Mrs. Clayborne, I’ve killed people. I walked into a diner with three other Storm Fronters and shot four policemen who were guilty of nothing but wearing blue uniforms and badges. I helped plant a pipe bomb that blinded a fifteen-year-old girl. I cheered when Jack Gardiner cut a policeman’s throat, and I helped lift up the corpse so Akitta Washington and Mary Terrell could nail his hands to a rafter. I’m the woman mothers warn their children not to grow up to be.” Didi offered a chilly smile, the shadows of bare tree branches slicing her face. “Welcome to my house.”
“Mark didn’t want to bring me. I kept at him until he did.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? Or safer?” She placed her fingertips together. “Mrs. Clayborne, you don’t know anything about the world I live in. I’ve killed people, yes; that’s my crime. But no judge or jury had to give me a prison sentence. Every day of my life since 1972 I’ve been looking over my shoulder, scared to death of what might be coming up behind. I sleep maybe three hours a night, on good nights. Sometimes I open my eyes in the dark and I’ve jammed myself into a closet without knowing it. I walk down the street and think a dozen people see through this face to who I used to be. And with every breath I take I know that I stole the life from fellow human beings. Snuffed them out, and celebrated their murders with hits of acid by candlelight.” She nodded, her green eyes hazy with pain. “I didn’t need a prison cell. I carry one around with me. So if you’re going to turn me over to the police, I’ll tell you this: they can’t do anything to me. I’m not here. I’m dead, and I’ve been dead for a very long time.”
The Monster Novels: Stinger, the Wolf's Hour, and Mine Page 145