“She’s not here.”
“Her car is parked out front.”
Her hands shook as she spoke. “She’s not here.”
“There’s also a half cup of coffee on your kitchen counter with lipstick traces.”
“That’s my cup.”
“You and I both know you never left a cup on a counter in your life.” I took a deep breath and slowly let it out with my words. “It would be nice if life weren’t so messy, but that’s just not the nature of things; we want things to be perfect, but most of the time we just spend our existence cleaning up the messes we make—and sometimes the messes of other people, people about whom we care most in the world.”
Her eyes came up slow, and the words came from her mouth in a staccato of verbal bursts. “Can’t. You. Just. Go. Away?”
“You know we can’t.” I waited a moment and then continued. “That’s what happened with Gerald, wasn’t it? When he found out what your daughter was guilty of and that it was something that he couldn’t clean up—at least not without breaking the law, which was something he’d never do—he punished himself.”
“Go away.”
“That’s the problem with guilt, it’s a two-way street; our children have to live with the things we do, and sometimes we have to live with their actions.” I moved in closer. “We tell them that we can protect them, but we can’t even protect ourselves from the mistakes we make—that’s why I’m here.”
“I told you—go away.”
“He didn’t tell you what she was doing, did he? He thought he could protect you if he killed himself and took the knowledge with him, but these things often can’t be hidden. We found the report that he didn’t file, the one where he talked to a woman by the name of Izzy. It took me a long time to put it together, but then I remembered that Lucian had referred to your daughter as Izzy, the nickname Gerald had used for her. I don’t think your daughter is a bad person, Mrs. Holman. I don’t know how she got involved in all this, but she’s made some terrible mistakes and she’s going to have to answer for them.”
She finally looked at me, the words striking out like a machete. “I hired you.”
“No, ma’am, you didn’t. You requested my help and I came, but nobody’s paying me.” I stood there with her glaring at me. “We’ve got a warrant, and there are about a half-dozen police officers out in front of your house right now, but I don’t really want it to happen like that.”
Her chin dropped to her chest, and she began fussing with the blanket that hid her legs, and I wasn’t surprised when she pulled a small Smith & Wesson revolver from the folds and held it there pointed at the floor.
I sighed deeply and then placed my hand in my pocket and waited.
The sobs that wracked her body were horrifying to listen to and watch, and all I could think was that this poor woman had paid enough in one life.
I glanced at the door to our right. “Where is Connie?”
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this . . .”
“I know.”
“We didn’t do anything wrong; we were good parents.” Her eyes came up to mine. “I didn’t know.”
“I’m sure you didn’t, but people have been hurt and people are dead.”
She raised the pistol a little higher and looked at it.
“Where is Connie?”
She pointed the .32 at me, and all I felt was tired.
“Go away.”
I shook my head. “You know I can’t do that.”
She pulled the hammer back. “I said, go away.”
“That’s not how this is going to end, all these horrible things, with one more horrible act . . .” I held out my hand. “It’s just going to end quietly and with dignity.”
There we were, the two of us staring at each other, neither of us wanting to be where we were, doing what we were doing, facing what we were facing. I tried to imagine how far I would go to protect my child, but I was just too tired to measure that kind of infinite distance.
Phyllis Holman held the .32 on me until her hand began to shake and then carefully lowered the hammer, turned the thing sideways, and held it out to me.
I took it and then turned to see Lucian holding his own sidearm hidden along his leg as I passed him and headed toward the door to the right. “I thought you were unarmed.”
He countered to the left and approached Phyllis as I continued on. “I ain’t ever unarmed.”
I turned the knob and swung it open to reveal a lonely room with only a single bed, a nightstand, and an old dresser. The wallpaper was peeling, and the carpet was stained, an anomaly in the otherwise pristine Holman house—a room to be used and forgotten, shunned and shut away, a cell. There were narrow windows above, two of them, choked with snow, and an old door in the far corner.
There was no one in the room, but the covers of the bed were pulled to one side where someone had been sitting, hiding, waiting. I looked behind the door to make sure there was no one there, stuffed the Smith into my pocket, and tried the other door. I pried it open to find stairs leading to a set of cellar doors, one of them pushed back, the fog rolling down the steps.
I launched up them as fast as my exhausted legs could carry me and stood in the backyard; there were prints leading toward the side of the house, and it looked like she’d started for her car but had seen the constabulary out front and had doubled back toward a small gate in a chain-link fence. Did she really think she had a chance of getting away? I thought about calling in the troops but figured she was probably tired, cold, and afraid and that I would rather try and talk her in myself.
Lifting the clasp, I stepped through and closed the gate behind me, turning to follow the prints as they made their way through an abandoned lot and then down a slope to a flat area. There were a few cottonwoods, bare and stark in the frozen fog, and it was almost as if I were rushing across a white desert.
There was a shape in the distance that looked human, but as I got closer, it seemed to fade away. I thought I could hear something coming, but sound was muffled and seemed to resonate from all directions. I thought about the buffalo in Custer State Park, and what Virgil had said, and it seemed like the natural world was closing in around me. Unconsciously, my hand drifted down to the confiscated .32 in my pocket; evidently, I never went unarmed either.
When I got to the edge of the hill, I looked to the west and could see the sheriff’s department’s light bar rotating blue onto the front of the Holman house. When I turned east I saw the figure again, just barely within my field of vision. I stepped and half slid down the hillside and started jogging down a path. After a moment, in one of those patches of clarity that happen on a foggy night, I could see her striding along Echeta Road, parallel with the train tracks, and eventually the highway.
Being in the state she was in, I suppose she thought she could just walk away into the fog.
I continued after her as she headed back toward the center of town, walking alongside the twelve-foot chain-link fence that guarded the railroad tracks, the spiraled razor wire making it seem as if we were in a prison.
In the distance, I could hear the horn of an oncoming train, possibly the one that Jone Urrecha and I had escaped from.
Hurrying my pace, I got within fifty yards of her and called out. “Connie!”
She stopped and turned to look at me, the slight wind pulling at her hair and long wool coat as if we were in some Brontë novel. She stood there like an unfinished phrase.
We looked at each other. I guess it was the most hopeful moment I had had, but I ruined it by starting toward her again. When I did, she turned and began running.
About twenty more yards down the road she slowed and dodged to the right through an opening in the fence, her coat snagging on the wire and holding her up.
Running faster, I got within an arm’s length, but she shrugged off the heavy garment and left it hanging as she
leapt forward and then began climbing the short hill leading toward the tracks. I tried pushing myself through the area where the chain-link had been cut and pulled apart, but the opening was too small. “Connie!”
At the top of the incline, she stepped onto the ties and turned to look down the tracks where the whistle blew again, closer this time. Then she turned and looked back at me, the breeze blowing her hair across her face, hiding half of it.
We stood there as before, looking at each other, but this time I could move no closer.
Seeing my situation, she seemed to relax, and then spoke. “I used to come here when I was a kid; we’d put pennies on the rails and then come back and get them.”
I pulled her coat from the wires and held it out to her through the opening. “Come take your coat; it’s freezing out here.”
She stood there, unmoving.
The train horns sounded again, and she turned toward them, the hair blowing back from her face. “I used to dance.”
I looked down the rails but couldn’t see anything yet.
“I was really good.”
I turned back to look at her and watched as she stretched her neck.
She went up on tiptoes, placed her arms in position, and turned, slowly at first, but then gaining momentum until she spun like a dervish. Coming to a stop, she faltered a bit and leaned forward, catching herself and laughing. “I’m a little out of practice.”
I pulled at the fence, but the opening was only wide enough for me to fit one leg and a shoulder through, my face pressed up against the chain-link.
Her voice was high and just a little bit manic. “I used to practice all the time, trying to keep my weight down I got stuck on amphetamines and a bunch of other stuff . . .” She moved her feet up onto the rail and balanced there. “It never goes away, you know.”
The train horns sounded again.
“You’d be amazed at the things you’ll do; things you can’t even imagine.” She began walking the rail as if it were a balance beam in a portrait of poise, flexibility, and strength. “Dave got me involved in all this, and I helped him. It got more involved, and he sold Linda to some guy in Florida.”
She twirled again and then stopped.
“I had this plan for my life, but when that fell through I decided I’d teach and help other people with their dreams . . . But I guess that didn’t work out, either.”
I could hear the train now, the vibration of the thing pounding the rails like punishment.
She stopped and turned to look in its direction. “I don’t think I can watch it—don’t have the stomach for it.” Then she turned to look at my face. “I guess that makes me a coward, huh? I might jump out of the way or something.” She turned on the rail and continued her performance. “Can’t have that.”
The horns sounded again, and now I could see the four headlights of the locomotive pushing through the fog, bound and determined to get somebody this time. Pulling on the post at the other side, I felt my jeans tearing and the canvas of my coat shredding as I tried to get through the ragged edges.
Struggling against the opening, I felt the wire ends drag across the side of my face, pulling at the bandages on my neck, and the sudden warmth of my blood as it trickled down my cheek and saturated the collar of my coat.
Breaking my head free, I yanked at the rest of me, but the opening wasn’t big enough, and I just hung there like a side of beef and watched the big train coming down the line like a juggernaut of justice, inevitable and unstoppable.
She took a few more steps on the rail but then stopped and folded her arms over her chest, still facing the other way. “I guess it’s time to go.”
I grunted and pulled hard, and with one sudden yank, I staggered forward and fell on the ice in the ditch on the other side.
Pushing myself up, I could see the coal train only a couple hundred yards down the tracks, rumbling toward us at speed. I scrambled off the ice up the incline toward the woman, but slipped and slid down on the snow, gritty with coal dust.
When I looked again, it was a lot closer.
I figured it would take a few seconds to get the rest of the way up the incline and another few to get a hold of her and snatch her from the tracks.
I looked back as I dug in with my boots and, taking an angular route, scrambled up and could now see the details of the giant orange and black conveyance, the front rails with the safety chain hanging between, the treads that led over the hood, and even noticed that the front had a modified cowcatcher—that would be the part that struck us.
No way I was going to make it.
Even with the approaching roar of the train, I could hear the siren of a car pulling onto the road behind me and could see the revolving illumination of the blue lights on the snow. Doors slammed, and I could hear Sandburg and Dougherty calling from behind me but couldn’t understand the words.
Catching a few good footholds, I felt myself going up the hill before I was even aware that I was trying, the snow and coal dust passing under my eyes as I just kept digging and trying not to look to my left, focusing so hard that all I could hear was my breathing.
Reaching the top with a roaring rush of my own, I finally glanced back and could see the train was on top of us, the horn blaring in a din that was deafening. I threw myself into her and felt the toe of my boot hit the end of a tie, and all I could think was that I was going to trip and land the both of us on the rails.
The train bore down with a sudden rush of wind, carrying the fog and thunderous din with it. Making sure to use my left arm to wrap her up, I carried the two of us across the tracks onto the downslope with a tremendous thump, tumbling and sliding to the bottom.
Still holding her next to me, I watched silently as the thing passed by, car after car after car. She began crying and clutched me, finally converting the sobs into a low and steady moan that unintentionally mimicked the train’s whistle in a sad and wrenching lament.
EPILOGUE
The taxicab driver said that the regular route to Pennsylvania Hospital would be a parking lot this time of morning, especially with the snow piled to the curbs and the fact that it was New Year’s Day and therefore the Mummers Parade but that he knew a shortcut.
He patted the dash of the run-down Crown Vic. “Beena will get us there, she used to work for the police department.” He turned to look at me. “Baggage?”
“More than I can carry.”
“Where is it?”
I closed the door behind me. “Sorry, I was joking.”
He nodded and turned back toward the meter. “Cash or credit?”
“Cash.”
“We’ll get there even faster.” He punched the button on his dash and then the accelerator. We drove, and he continued to smile at me in the rearview mirror. “I have to tell you, that’s one bad hat you’re wearing.”
“Thanks.” We drove on, taking a banked loop underneath the highway, which was, as he’d predicted, jammed.
“Texas?”
I watched the floating snow flurries, somehow different from that of the high plains. “Wyoming.”
“Where’s that?”
“Above Colorado and below Montana.”
He edged the Crown Vic forward and then hit his horn as an individual in another cab cut in front of him and attempted to crowd his way into the lane escaping the airport. “There’s a state in between those two?”
“Since 1890.”
I could see him still studying me in the rearview mirror, probably taking note of the bruises, stitches on my face, bandages around my neck, and that little piece of my ear that was missing. “Don’t they have doctors there?”
I breathed a tired chuckle. “Yep, but my daughter lives here, and she’s the one having the baby.” On cue, I felt the phone vibrating in my pocket. One of the flight attendants had been kind enough to plug the thing in and rechar
ge it after giving me a glass of champagne or it would’ve been long dead. I pulled it out and recognized the number. “Sweet-pea?”
The voice of the Cheyenne Nation came on the line. “I am supposed to ask where you are. Please do not answer with any other location than the City of Brotherly Love.”
“Just got in a cab from the airport.”
Another pause. “There was a car waiting for you, did you not see the man holding the sign with your name on it?”
“Are you kidding? I’m lucky I saw the airport.” I looked around. “Well, I’m in this one. Anyway, I’m on my way to Pennsylvania Hospital, right?”
“Yes, everyone is here.”
“Well . . . Almost everyone, I hope.”
“The only other member of the party is due at 8:20 A.M.”
I nodded into the phone. “Thanks for the reminder.”
“You have two hours to get to the hospital. Do you think you will make it?”
I leaned forward to get the taxi driver’s attention. “How long to Pennsylvania Hospital?”
He studied the road ahead. “Thirty minutes, tops.”
I repeated the response to the Bear, but this time it was someone else on the line. “Hurry up and get here, these fucking people are driving me up a wall. You’d think that no one had ever had a baby in the history of vaginas.”
“By fucking people I assume you mean your family?”
“All of ’em, including my uncle Al who in the spirit of the New Year was the only one thoughtful enough to bring wine and glasses.” There was a pause. “How you doin’?”
I stared at my reflection in the window. “I’m good.”
“I heard you’re even more torn all to hell than when we left you.”
“A little.”
There was a pause. “Where are you anyway?”
I spoke out to the driver. “Where are we?”
He trailed the words over his shoulder as I held the phone out. “Lindbergh Boulevard, driving past Suffolk Park.”
When I returned the device to my ear there was real annoyance in her voice. “What the fuck are you doing all the way over there?”
Any Other Name: A Longmire Mystery Page 27