“I never could throw one of those things,” he said after the boy had returned through the bushes to the field and his mates. “I always feel like I look like a girl throwing a baseball.” He mimed the stereotyped awkwardness he imagined the action to be, and she responded by slapping his back and spinning him into a tree.
“Peace!” she said quickly when he came at her, “and when the hell are you going to buy me some lunch? It’s past noon, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Past noon? Then what are all these kids doing around here? Why aren’t they in school?” .
“Oxrun,” she said, “has a little heart, you know. Half a day so the tiny kids can do their trick or treating before it gets dark. The high school gets out so the brats can break windows.”
“Never,” he said. “Not our sterling youth.”
“Food,” she reminded him, and he took her arm.
Another ten minutes, then, of choosing divergent paths at random, and they reached a small pavilion squatting in the center of a huge oval clearing. A man swathed in scarf and leather jacket was deftly handling the orders of a dozen or more people for hot dogs buried beneath the sharp aromas of ketchup and sauerkraut. Beside him, a scrawny young girl lost in a ski sweater slopped soda into gaily colored paper cups, ignoring the specific requests shouted into her ears.
“Five star, at least,” Marc grumbled.
“Buy,” Natalie said, pushing him into the crowd, standing back and watching him snatch at his glasses when a pair of boys raced into him and nearly dumped him to the ground. She waved at his glare, and hugged herself, taking a strand of hair into her mouth and chewing thoughtfully.
And when he returned, they moved away, walking and eating, kicking at eddied piles of leaves, lifting their heads at a flock of Canadian geese crying the coming of winter.
A dirt path led them silently to the top of a low hill, and the exposed roots of a massive, ancient oak served as their seats. They stared down the long, treeless slope across an open field carefully mowed. To their left, through another stand of arrow straight pine, they could see the blue-black glints of the artificial lake where ice skating under the lights was the favorite sport. To the right, midway down the hill, was a gazebo that served as a bandstand for Sunday afternoon concerts when enough people gathered in summer to picnic and listen. And directly ahead, through the white glare of the sun just into its westering, she could see the football game and beyond, the roof of the library.
“It’s like sitting on a cloud,” she said, feeling as though she should whisper.
“Well, it’s cold up here, if you ask me,” he grumbled.
“Such a romantic,” she said.
“Oh, I am that,” he said, “but I’m afraid we have some things to talk about, love.”
She wanted to protest, but knew he was right. After Marc’s test on the road, and Miriam’s death, what could have been isolated incidents of coincidence now demanded they seek out a link. Yet, again, they were restricted to suspicions only, lacking concrete evidence they could lay in front of the authorities.
“But if that’s all we have,” he said, “then that’s all we have. So let’s build us a case, and see what we have.”
For an hour, then, they reviewed, dissected, prodded, argued.
A cheer drifted up from the football game, and Natalie strained to hold it, lost it when the wind found them and infiltrated the openings of collar and sleeve.
Marc paced, toeing at twigs and rocks, kicking pebbles onto the grass. He suggested an enemy of Ben’s, and she laughed without mirth. No one, she said, had ever been put away by her husband for more than thirty days.
“But you’re still a target,” he said.
“By what?”
“Who,” he said sharply. “There is no what about this. Keep one thing in mind, love, we’re dealing with people, okay?”
Grudgingly, “Okay. Then, why?”
“That’s easy. There’s something you know that you don’t know that you know.” He frowned, muttered to himself, and shrugged. “I mean — ”
“I know what you mean,” she said impatiently, “and I’ll bet you a year’s salary it starts with those missing books.”
He pulled at his lips, then shoved his hands in his hip pockets. “Maybe. What kind have we got, though? If I remember right, they were the kind that needed a certain amount of thought to appreciate fully. And kinds that required faith in some type of organized religion.” He looked down at her, his shadow chilling. “And you can have my year’s salary, such as it is, if the replacements weren’t all tripe. Crap. Shallow pieces of dreck that wouldn’t strain the credulity of a five-year-old.”
“Yes!” she said, standing quickly, brushing the crumbs of her lunch from her slacks. “Yes, that’s exactly what they were, only I was so busy with all my other things that I never checked that closely. Boy, am I stupid!”
“Well, that’s fine except we don’t know why.”
“Who?” she countered.
“The Council is the one that does the ordering now, you said. Toal, as President, then Dederson, Adriana Hall, Bains, Vorhees …” He frowned and counted silently on his fingers. “No, that can’t be. See, the only reason why they’d do something like this would be to keep those who used the library in the dark about something.”
“Like the college kids, who don’t have one of their own,” she said, picturing the dull, lifeless retreat of Miriam’s friends from her funeral.
“Do you know what we’re saying, lady? We’re talking about an attempt to control a whole population, for God’s sake! But it’s too big. They’d have to bring in too many others, like Sam Windsor. I mean, you can’t control a town without having the police, can you? And the commuters?” He sat abruptly on the ground and slammed his chin into a palm. “This is insane, you know that, don’t you? I mean, even extending the wildest possibility that we’re right, kid, who could we tell? Sam? If we’re right, he’s in on it. The mayor of the next town? The FBI? The President? I can see it now, just like in the old movies. Say there ... Agent Smith or Mayor Jones ... do you know that the Town Council of little old Oxrun Station has embarked on a crusade to dominate its population? Do you know that they jiggered some books, knocked off a few folks, even sent an assassin after a pretty young thing? How, you ask? Beats the heck out of me.”
He glared and spat dryly at his feet.
“Marc?” Natalie knelt in front of him and grabbed for his hands. He pulled, but she wouldn’t release him, forced him to look at her. “Marc, remember that thing I told you about Karl and his drinks? He implied he could get what he wanted if he knew the right combinations they liked.”
“Yeah. So?”
“He said it was an experiment.”
She felt the change immediately. His hands lost their rigidity, his lips tightened, then parted just enough to allow a silent whistle to blow into her face. His eyes darted from side to side, and a slight tic of concentration pulled at his right cheek. Freeing himself from her grip, he pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket, took off his glasses and began to polish them. Then he nodded, slowly at first, then more rapidly until she feared he’d break into a hysterical fit. Abruptly, however, he stopped, rose, pulled her up with him and led her back to the path.
“Experiment,” he said. “A preview, then, for ... something. I wish I knew for what. Natalie, if you weren’t the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life, I would build you a solid gold monument so the whole world would know who you are. As it is, though,” he said wryly, “I am much too possessive for something that flamboyant.”
“Well, I’m glad you feel that way. I think. But, Marc, what are we going to do about it ?”
At the moment, he said, there was nothing they could do, no matter how frustrating their inaction would be. If they had, in fact, stumbled on some conspiracy, what they would need before anything else would be concrete proof. And still … all they had were suspicions.
“Hounds,” she said.
; “Right. We’ve got to keep sniffing around. Circumstantial evidence is not going to help us convince some on the outside. The best thing would be to get hold of Toal, torture him, and make him sign a confession. Failing that ... “ and he shrugged.
Neither, by tacit consent, tried to explain the attack on her house.
Neither mentioned the “dream” she’d had in the library.
What is it, Natalie wondered, that I know that would make someone want to get me?
And it passed through her mind that she wasn’t going to be killed. Soldiers were killed; people died in accidents and during robberies and in fits of passion; people were killed by falling masonry and earthquakes and floods. It happened to them. Other people. To her — impossible. She was only a librarian in a small town more properly called a village. She was a nobody, a widow, a woman in love. Preposterous. Not her. The other guy.
They hurried, in silence, parting clumps of children, swerving only when others would not make way.
At a distant bend in the tarmac path, she fixed her eyes on a massive weeping elm held together by bands of steel to keep its forked trunk from splitting. She blinked. Put a finger to one eye and rubbed lightly. In a hollow of leaves untouched by the sun were pinpricks of light flaring like electric sparks. They were whirling about a common axis, coalescing to form behind them a shadow of indeterminate shape.
It watched her.
“Marc,” she whispered harshly, “look!”
It shifted, and the leaves rustled in counterpoint to the wind.
“Look at what? Where?”
It appeared to hunch, prepare to pounce.
“There!” she said, pulling him off to the side.
Marc followed her indication, leaning forward as though to get a clearer view. Then he looked down at her. “Hey, kid, are you feeling okay?”
It was gone. She leaned heavily against him, felt an arm slip around her waist. As they passed under the overhanging branches, she shuddered and ducked her head. She felt, then, that whatever it was had not been a true threat. A warning, only.
Marc, she thought, I’m going to pack my bags and leave on the next train. You can have the car and the furniture and the house and the graveyard; I’m going to lose myself in the middle of the country.
But if she left, Marc would be alone.
“No,” she said to Marc’s startled look. ‘‘I’ll kill him first.”
“Hey! What’s going on around here?”
“Nothing.” She brushed a hand through her hair, lifting it to be caught by the wind.
“Good,” he said, as they rounded the bend. “Then maybe you can tell me how we’re going to play this miserable round.”
And he nodded toward the refreshment stand clearing.
* * *
Chapter 9
Distraction. Over a dozen youngsters in football uniforms had converged raucously on the snack bar, demanding simultaneous and instantaneous attention from the harried counterman and his assistant. Freshly muddied helmets pounded against the peeling wood, and high-pitched shrieks partially covered the clatter and grind of cleats on the blacktop. Though none were more than chest-high to Marc, their pads and colors lent them the illusion of an extra six inches. It was impossible to tell which was the losing team.
Natalie smiled at their vigor, became solemn again when she saw Ambrose Toal standing behind one of the redwood-and-concrete benches spaced at the clearing’s perimeter. His gloved hands were pressed against his hips, his cashmere greatcoat forced behind him like a black opera cape. Gold-rimmed glasses caught narrow shafts of sunlight and scattered them, and the buttons of his hounds tooth jacket were like burnished stars as he swiveled stiffly. She followed his gaze and saw the ramrod back of Adriana Hall disappear swiftly around the next bend. She was about to alert Marc, then, when he grunted another oath, and a young woman stepped from behind the pavilion, assisting the owner in passing out high-stacked ice cream cones to grasping, filthy hands. She laughed, tousled hair, grabbed one blond head and planted a fierce kiss on its crown.
Toal spotted them and nodded an imperial invitation.
“We were speaking of the devil, right?” Marc whispered as Natalie pulled him forward.
“So get it from the horse’s mouth,” she muttered. “You’re supposed to be a reporter, remember?”
“But we’re not ready, jerk,” he said.
She ignored him. He was right, but there was no way out. Toal was already stepping around the bench, stripping off a pale grey kidskin glove and extending his right hand. She hoped her smile looked more shy than the fear that lurked behind it.
“Mrs. Windsor, how delightful!” The show of capped teeth beneath the dark green-lensed sunglasses was grotesque. She accepted the hand timidly, drew her own back as soon as she dared-it was cold, and she tried not to make a show of rubbing warmth back into her palm.
“And Mr. Dayton, a pleasure to see you again. Have you two been visiting the war memorial statue?” Toal was deliberately mixing up Marc’s name. Marc scratched the back of his neck. “I wish I could have, sir, but I’ve been out of town for a few days.”
Toal snapped his fingers. “I thought it was you! You were at the conference, weren’t you? Yes, of course, I thought I saw you there.” He yanked off the olive ascot lumped at his throat and jammed it into a coat pocket. “Dull affair, didn’t you think? I’m afraid you didn’t get much for Dederson’s money.”
“No,” Marc said carefully, “and I doubt that very much was accomplished. From what I saw, the only one not complaining all the time was you.”
Toal laughed soundlessly, pointing at the reporter while he sent an approving nod to Natalie. “He’s right, you know. You must have been the only correspondent not asleep.” He allowed his laughter to fade, then sat brusquely on the bench, gesturing for them to join him on either side. For several minutes they watched the children scrambling for their treats, surrounding the woman in harmless vying for her favors. “Have you met my daughter, Cynthia?” Natalie immediately pressed two fingers against her lips, wishing she could see around the financier to watch Marc’s expression-she was sure he was blue from trying not to gag. But when neither responded, Toal cleared his throat. “Those men are fools, Mr. Dayton,” he said quietly. “Every last one of them is an unmitigated fool. They play with their money as if it were part of some childish cosmic game. Boardwalk, Park Place, take a chance and pray your luck will change. I don’t know one of the old farts who isn’t killing himself by working a hundred hours a day, a thousand months a year. Idiots, all of them.”
“Maybe,” Marc said, “but they’re making their millions.”
“Indeed they are. They do have their millions. But at what cost? Ten, twenty years of life because they don’t know how to do it right. All that time wasted because they refuse to look for other ways to get to the same place. Like I said, they’re fools.”
“Well, sir,” Marc said, “if they’re not doing it right, what is the proper way to do it?”
A shadow interrupted them, and Natalie freed a heavy held breath. Then she lifted her face and felt it harden as expression fled inside. Cynthia Toal returned the look with a condescending nod. Unlike her father, she was dressed for warm weather. Her sun blond hair was tied back with a wide, red satin band, her dark blouse was too sheer to properly emphasize the sunlamp tan while it over-emphasized the inadequate black brassiere, and her jeans were tight and tucked neatly into polished knee-high riding boots.
It was too much for Natalie to believe she’d chosen that outfit merely to impress a tribe of grade schoolers; and in the same thought, too much to believe that Toal normally spent his Friday afternoons giving economic lectures in the park.
Marc and Toal, meanwhile, had risen to their feet. Toal had grasped his daughter’s arm, and Marc was shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, grinning inanely.
Oh, for God’s sake, Natalie thought angrily, and quickly moved to stand beside him. Immediately, then, she was reminded of Elaine’s and Mar
c’s battle for possession in her room. So, she thought, the shoe shifts and all that, and she made a note to apologize to her as soon as she could.
“Well, Nat, what do you think? It sound okay to you?”
“Huh?” She blinked stupidly. ‘‘I’m sorry, I must have been in another world. Woolgathering, I guess.”
“Oh, but it must have been difficult for you today, dear,” Cynthia said. “I mean, the funeral and everything. There’s no need to apologize, of course.” She looked at her father. “But perhaps they haven’t heard the news.”
Toal seemed to debate before his face broke into a smile. “Well, of course not! Now that is really unforgivable of us. Here you two have been wandering the park and you certainly couldn’t have been told, could you?”
“Told what?” Marc said.
“Why, about Sam Windsor, of course.”
Natalie stiffened.
Cynthia laughed. “Natalie, the look on your face! Nothing bad, dear, nothing bad at all. Why,” and she glanced down at her sliver of a watch, “not more than an hour ago, Sam captured the man who killed Miriam and all those other poor people.”
And as soon as she said it, Natalie refused to believe it. That, she thought, was too pat, too convenient. She listened, then, as Toal explained to Marc how Sam had discovered a drifter wandering through the cemetery, muttering to himself. The old man, who must have been near fifty, was slashing out at the graves with a machete. There was a brief struggle, and Sam had been forced to kill him in self-defense.
“But we have a lot of the modern lab equipment,” he said, “and Sam had them run a check on the bloodstains on that knife thing. Everything matches. Case closed.”
“Now,” Cynthia said delightedly, “there’s no reason why you shouldn’t come. It’ll be a celebration, too!”
“Come?” Natalie looked to Marc.
“While you were daydreaming, Nat, the Toals were kind enough to invite us to a costume ball tomorrow night.”
The Hour of the Oxrun Dead (Necon Classic Horror) Page 13