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by J. Carson Black

  MAX TURNED AROUND and drove back to a scenic pullout. Cut the engine and rolled in. Just sat there, shaking with adrenaline and fear. And satisfaction.

  He could hear a muted whump—fire. The bright light flared in his side mirror.

  But the fire went out almost as quickly as it had started—doused by the rain.

  Not long after that, the rain lessened to a soft patter, then stopped altogether. Typical of thunderstorm cells in the desert.

  A few wisps of gray smoke floated into the sky.

  Max turned the car around, drove back, and parked above the wreck.

  The truck lay far down the steep embankment, partially hidden behind a big juniper bush. Nothing moved.

  She had to be dead.

  No way she could live through that.

  He got out of the car and sat on the guardrail—the part that was still intact. Weedy trees and a snarl of bushes along the roadside and running down the slope concealed much of the land on his side. He just sat and stared at the wreck, watching for movement. But he saw nothing. An hour, watching. Two hours. Nobody on the road, nobody coming by.

  He stared at the portion of the burned-out hulk he could see. Stared a hole through it.

  Waited some more.

  He had to be sure.

  WHEN MAX FINALLY returned to his car, he wondered if the cops were looking for him. He’d sped through town, the truck glued to his tailpipe, nearly running down pedestrians—it was possible someone would be able to identify a 1987 Chrysler LeBaron. (Unlikely, since the car was old and obscure and it had been dark and pouring rain, but you never knew.) Max had not heard any sirens. He’d been out in the open for at least two hours, looking down at a truck lying in the gorge. The wreck was a long way from town, and there were plenty of twists and turns to hide it from view.

  Max figured if he kept to the back streets of Jerome—if he kept to the speed limit—no one would notice.

  He was right.

  He glanced at his watch and was surprised to see that it was only eight o’clock at night. There were only a few people and cars on the streets. But Max didn’t see one cop car. He took the back streets. Here he’d left a litter trail of the hijacked and the dead, and yet nothing in this town had changed.

  Hard to believe.

  He drove back to the Desert Oasis Healing Center and piloted the LeBaron across the flattened section of chain-link fence, careful to stay out of the gully.

  Why tell them he was coming?

  Lucky for him, the guardhouse a half mile up the road was empty. No rent-a-cop was going to sit out there on a night like this.

  THERE WERE PLENTY of expensive cars in the lot. The richest of the rich. The fucked-uppest of the fucked-up. Max reached the glass front doors to the main wing and walked in. Nobody in the foyer—a long glass tunnel between the front entrance with its cactus garden and the pool and cabanas on the other side. A massive, generic chandelier, the kind you’d find at Marriotts everywhere, cast a dim orange light. He walked in the direction of Gordon’s office. His footsteps echoed on the Saltillo tile.

  Everyone locked up for the night.

  He got to the door to Gord’s office. What now? Knock?

  No.

  He aimed a kick under the doorknob, and to his surprise, the door flew open.

  No one there.

  The anticlimax almost buried him. He’d been planning so long for the confrontation, now he felt lost.

  “Sir?”

  He spun around. It was Gordon’s assistant, Drew.

  “Good to see you, uh, Max,” the assistant said. “You look like you could use freshening up. Would you like to go to your room?”

  “So you can lock me in?”

  “That wasn’t my intention, sir. I thought you might want a hot shower and some fresh clothes.”

  Max pictured the clothes. The trademark white drawstring yoga pants and blousy white pirate shirt. Add Birkenstocks, and you could join an ashram.

  “Your leg, sir. You’re bleeding. I could call the nurse.”

  “Just, let’s…” He felt a little dizzy. “I want to talk to Gordon. You get me? He’s gonna want to hear what I have to say.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  And Max was ushered through the right wing to his room.

  Right back where he’d started. He thought about fighting, but you couldn’t fight all the time. He was tired, wounded. The adrenaline that had fueled him was beginning to dissipate.

  He still believed that Gordon needed him more than he needed Gordon. He was still Max Conroy, the star of the V.A.M.Pyre series. The golden goose, for want of a better term. He truly believed they needed him more than he needed them.

  And so he took a shower. A nurse practitioner dressed his wound and gave him antibiotics. He felt better. When she was gone, he looked out at his reflection, mirrored against the lighted pool. Trying to nail down what he would say to Gordon, but unable to hold onto his thoughts.

  A light knock.

  “Come in.”

  It was Shower Cap.

  Max thought: I’m hallucinating again.

  Shower Cap put his finger to his lips and crept into the room, his movements exaggerated and low, like Groucho Marx. It helped that he wore a doctor’s white smock and a doctor’s head mirror instead of the shower cap.

  Am I hallucinating again?

  Max closed the door behind them.

  Shower Cap drew the curtains closed.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” he said.

  “It’s like I never left.” Max was beginning to remember now. How could he have forgotten Shower Cap? Only Shower Cap’s real name was Darren. Darren Fitch-Wender.

  Shower Cap was the mascot here. Max knew that Gordon’s silent partner in the DO was Darren’s father, Thaddeus B. Fitch-Wender.

  Yes, that Thaddeus B. Fitch-Wender.

  How could he have forgotten?

  Max had holes in his memory, but how could he have forgotten Darren?

  Darren was in his midforties and had lived here for at least fifteen years—since shortly after the place was built. Darren was a drummer in a semifamous heavy metal band twenty years ago. He’d done a lot of drugs, and eventually they’d taken their toll. Max had heard the story of Darren’s life from Serena, his masseuse, after Darren had popped in one day and sat cross-legged on the table opposite. He’d worn only a sari and his shower cap.

  Max stared at Darren, who was checking the bathroom for intruders. He crabbed around, checking the windows and doors, then looked at Max and put his finger to his lips. “Checking for bugs,” he whispered.

  Max assumed there were bugs. Whether or not this nutcase could find them, he didn’t know.

  “What’s going on?” Max asked.

  “I brought your script back. Remember?”

  Max didn’t remember.

  He didn’t remember much at all.

  “I thought you’d want it, now that you’re back.”

  “What script?”

  “The script. Shhhh! The walls have ears.”

  “How’d you find out I was here?”

  “Everybody knows you’re here. The Maxter is back!” he hooted.

  Suddenly Max knew why he always saw Shower Cap in a boat. “Man in the Boat,” he said.

  Darren turned around. “Shhhhhhhhh!”

  “Sorry,” Max whispered. “That was the name of your hit record: Man in the Boat. Wasn’t it?”

  Darren nodded. “I did the drums!” He started with a flurry of hands, and Max remembered that too. Shower Cap—Darren—was always playing drums in the air.

  Darren’s band, Phonetic, had had the one mildly dirty hit, “Man in the Boat,” which had inspired Max’s hallucination. Max associated Darren with a boat because of the song. Max said, “What script?”

  “Your script, of course. It has your name on it. I found it one time when I was waiting for my dad in the office. It’s a secret.”

  Finally, someone crazier than he was.

  “Should I ch
eck your pulse and respiration?” Darren asked.

  “I don’t think that’s necessary. But I could use your help.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  Max whispered, “Where’s Gordon?”

  “Gordon’s waiting.”

  “Waiting?”

  “He said something about cooling your heels.”

  “You heard him say that?”

  “I used my stethoscope.”

  OK.

  “On the door.”

  Max wondered how much he could rely on any information he got from Darren. But he guessed that Darren had overheard Gordon talking about cooling his heels. That sounded like Gordon. It sounded like a trick Gordon would pull. Gordon loved to play psychological games. So this was why the wait.

  Let Max stew.

  Max had built himself up for this confrontation. He was ready to roll. But now here he was, cooling his heels, waiting for Gordon to make his grand entrance.

  Two could play at that game. “So you have the script?”

  Darren pulled it out from under his doctor’s jacket. “Ta-daaaa!”

  Max sat down on the bed and looked at the title page.

  There was nothing on it except a stamp that said, “Final Draft.”

  Darren said, “I’d better go.”

  “Yes,” Max said. “Thanks. Thanks a lot for finding my script.”

  Darren beamed. “I thought you would like it. Don’t let the bedbugs bite—if you know what I mean.” And he pointed at the ceiling tiles. Then he danced over to the door, wriggled his fingers good-bye, and was gone.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  JERRY LOOKED OUT the plate glass windows of Gordon’s suite at the pool. “So he walked right in?”

  Gordon said, “When you think about it, that was his only choice. He needs me. I’m the only one who can bring him back to full mental health.”

  Pompous ass, Jerry thought.

  Talia spoke for all of them: “So now what?”

  “All the world is a stage, and all the players are…on it,” Gordon finished. Shakespeare had never been his subject of choice.

  “Oh, puleeese.” Talia crossed her legs sexily.

  Gordon ignored her. “Of course, as far as the cops and media know, he was right here all along. And no one can prove different. He was in rehab, in the sensory deprivation flotation tank, and we protected his privacy. Because that is what we do.”

  Jerry laughed. “Good luck selling that, Gord. Just turn on the news. Seems to me a lot of people saw him.”

  “Or saw somebody like him,” Gordon murmured. “Like his stunt double.”

  “So what now, Gordon?” Talia said, that mosquito whine to her voice. Once this was over, once Jerry got control of Max’s estate, he was going to sever his relationship once and for all.

  “I want him primed. If you think he’s messed up now, you should see him in a while.”

  Jerry said, “We’ve got to talk about what we’re going to do next.”

  “Oh, we will, Jer. But I, for one, am savoring the moment. I’ve been vindicated. From where I’m sitting, it’s ‘move along folks, nothing to see here.’ I made the right call.”

  “The right call? What right call?”

  “All along I’ve stood firm and told the media I’ve been protecting his privacy. The media, the cops, I told them the same thing. He’s here, he’s undergoing life-affirming therapy. Confidential therapy. I did not waver.”

  Talia examined her nails. “Does this mean we’re not going to dissolve him in acid?”

  SHERIFF BONNY BONNEVILLE made sure the door to his office was closed, then said to Tess. “You telling me you’d stake your career on that? Max Conroy is innocent in the killing of five people?”

  It was just the two of them, although Bonny knew there were a few deputies crowded around the door, listening. Bonny lowered his voice. “He took you hostage. At gunpoint. At the very least, he’s in deep for that.”

  “I know.”

  Bonny stared out the window. Not that he could see anything. Just raindrops sliding down the glass and darkness behind it and a few street and porch lights, mostly glare. He tried to concentrate on everything his newly minted detective had told him, but it was hard to make sense of it.

  Bonny knew what his mentor, the long-dead Sheriff Walt McKinney, who had been sheriff of Bajada County for forty years, would have said.

  What does your gut tell you?

  “Tell me again about the woman and the boy.”

  Tess described them. “The boy is dead, though.”

  “I’ll put out an Attempt to Locate for them both. Phrase it this way, ‘one or both.’ And the truck is operable?”

  Tess said, “She drove right by. With the boy strapped into the seat.”

  “You’re sure he’s dead?”

  She looked at him. Her honest hazel eyes, smooth face, neat hair. Nothing spectacular—she wouldn’t stop traffic—but there was something about her. Something that couldn’t be summed up in words. Reliable, maybe. Although that didn’t do her justice.

  Besides, she had that weird ability—what did they call it? Superior autobiographical memory.

  He swiveled back in his chair and propped his lizard-skin boots up on the desk. “Tell me everything you remember.”

  IT WAS QUITE a long list. Bonny put out an Attempt to Locate for a white Chevy Silverado 2500HD with a black bed liner. Tess had given him the license plate number. It was a new truck, this year’s model. Of course, Tess remembered the woman too. She described her down to her New Balance athletic shoes. The woman sounded like something out of a horror movie. Half man, half woman, and all mean. The fade haircut. The man’s clothes. The strange boy. Tess said she’d seen the woman with a .45 and a .22.

  The .22 was an assassin’s gun. Tess was sure she was a hired assassin.

  But would a hired assassin scalp one of the men at the mine site? “That doesn’t sound like an efficient killer to me,” Bonny said.

  “It was the boy,” Tess said.

  “The boy?”

  Tess licked her lips. She was rarely unsure of herself, so he was taken aback by it. “I think,” she said, “it was a blooding.”

  Her voice was soft.

  “What did you say?”

  “I think it was a blooding. She let him have the kill, and he went overboard.”

  “You mean, like an animal?”

  Tess looked at him with those disturbingly calm eyes. He noticed for the first time she had a sprinkling of freckles on her nose.

  “She was training him to be like her. To be a killer. I think…” Tess paused. “She doesn’t see the boy as her son. I think she sees him as her cub.”

  BONNY KNEW HE’D face a firestorm of criticism. He’d be called every name in the book. But he sent out the Attempt to Locate for the man-woman and her cub (who might be dead or, for all he knew, regenerated like you saw in those god-awful horror movies his kid liked). He sent it out to every other agency in a five-hundred-mile radius. He fielded a dozen calls personally. He did not talk to the press, although the phone rang off the hook. He wondered if he should call a press conference. This was too much. He was in his late fifties, and it might be time to retire anyway. He could see himself on a lake in the White Mountains, fishing. In this state, in this day and age, this was no job for an old man.

  Pat Kerney demanded to see him. Tess remained seated in Bonny’s office, and she said nothing during Pat’s tirade. Pat ended with, “We’re the laughingstock of the country!”

  Tess just looked at Pat with those calm, reliable eyes.

  After ten minutes, Bonny said to Pat, “Are you done?”

  “Yes, I’m done!”

  “Then follow my directive.”

  Pat slammed out the door without another word.

  Bonny sighed. “I’ve probably sunk my reelection bid, no matter what happens,” he murmured to no one in particular.

  He glanced at her, looking for a sliver of doubt in those hazel eyes.

&
nbsp; And found none.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  MAX LAY ATOP the bedspread, trying to remember. Did Jerry or Gordon ever show him a script? He didn’t think so. In fact, he was pretty sure they hadn’t. But Gordon had mentioned something about it.

  He tried to remember. Something about a scene…one more scene for the film he’d just wrapped. The director had said something about it. That was his impression. But maybe the director hadn’t said anything at all. Hard for Max to remember. Everything got mixed up for Max these days. It was as if someone had been pouring stuff into his brain like veggies into a SaladShooter, and what came out was chopped into little pieces.

  Desert God was the name of the film.

  But the film had already wrapped, except for a few leftover scenes that didn’t involve him.

  Would they really want him to do a scene now, while he was in rehab?

  No. They wouldn’t.

  He turned to the first the page of the script and started reading.

  The scenario was all too familiar.

  The scene opened with a long shot of a car on a lonely road in the middle of nowhere.

  The room’s temperature seemed to drop fifty degrees. He could practically feel his organs shrink inside him.

  There was a woman and a girl.

  In the script, there was also a mother and a girl.

  A mother and a little girl.

  His face grew hot and his heart rate sped up.

  A mother and a little girl and a car in the middle of nowhere.

  The logical part of his mind told him there was no car, there was no mother with a little girl, not in Desert God. None of them belonged in the story. Whatever this was, it wasn’t Desert God. The scene had been tacked on.

  Gordon had planted this—the girl, the car, the command telling Max to freeze. He’d planted it in Max’s subconscious. Gordon had plenty of tools available—hypnosis, drugs, therapy sessions. Therapies that seemed normal on the surface, but who knew how his psyche could be manipulated? He thought about the people who went to self-help seminars and ended up jumping to their deaths.

  And those were just self-help seminars.

  What could Gordon do if he had an uninterrupted three weeks?