Lone Rock

by Duane Lindsay

But for clothes? He shook his head in amazement and picked up the check.

  Back at Control-logics Ruth buzzed him through the locked doors but she refused to meet his eyes.

  “She just said no.”

  “What? That’s not...how could she?” Maggie paused, inhaled and collected her thoughts. “What did she say?”

  “She said she likes her job. She knows something’s weird but she won’t jeopardize her position. I think she likes being able to buy clothes. And she thinks I put you up to this.”

  “Well, I did.”

  “I’m doing this because I chose to. You didn’t force me.”

  “Okay, How can she say no?”

  Adrian thought about it. “I think she’s afraid. She likes what she has and doesn’t want to risk it. She’s not that much different from the rest of us.”

  “Touché. I guess everybody has their limits. Like me with performing.” She considered her own actions in the light of someone else’s, a difficult self-examination. “Have some fries. I’m thinking of going to an audition night at the Mercury Cafe.”

  Adrian was surprised at this was big step. ‘“I hope I didn’t push you.”

  “I’m doing this because I chose to,” she mimicked. “You didn’t force me.”

  “It’s hard, isn’t it? Facing up to fear?”

  “Brother, you have no idea.”

  They ate for several minutes, each in their own thoughts. McDonald’s seemed an odd place for serious planning, it’s red and yellow plastic more suited to clowns and parties than life changes. Adrian dipped the last French fry in ketchup.

  “So what are we gonna do?” asked Maggie.

  “I’ve got to go back to Utah tomorrow,” Adrian said. “They’re testing the first stage of my program and I have to be there. When I come back we’ll decide what to do.”

  “Are you flying out?”

  ‘Yep.”

  “Why the Lark?” She looked to the parking lot where the yellow car was attracting attention.

  “I’m test driving it, seeing if there’s anything wrong. I kind of like to drive it, to tell the truth.”

  “It’s so yellow.”

  “Yeah, it surprises me that I’m not mortified. Must be a character flaw.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to be back. I’m working overtime tonight to catch up. I’m flying out tomorrow. See you when I’m back from the desert?”

  “You bet.” She leaned over and he kissed her.

  Corley gulped the final bite of Cashew Chicken, sipped the last of his tea and picked up the check. Time to get back to the office. Lunch had been restful, but he was still in a state of agitation over the argument with Wally. What was wrong with the man that he couldn’t see Adrian Beck as the threat he was? The guy attacks an entire gang in a bus and Wally persists in thinking of him as Casper Milquetoast. And it was his ass on the line if things went wrong. No way he was going down alone.

  He paid and walked to the Audi, still fuming. The parts had been delivered and sent out to the job—at least that had gone right—and the police in Ohio seemed to have given up on him, also good news. But Adrian Beck. The man stuck in Corley’s mind like a piece of chicken stuck in a tooth, hard to get at, impossible to ignore.

  He picked a piece of chicken from his tooth as he waited out the light at Hamden, and turned west back to the office, driving without any real thought. He pulled into the parking lot, headed for his space and stopped.

  At the far end was an old car, looking new. It gleamed in the thin sunlight like a gold bar, impossibly yellow. The color made a powerful statement: here I am, it said. Look at me. It was the car of a very self-assured owner, a bold, decisive person. Corley imagined himself in a car that color and fell short, unsure if he’d dare. He compared it to his own bold red Audi.

  He ambled over to the car. A Studebaker Lark, he saw, amused. In absolutely perfect condition. Corley admired competence and this was a very well done restoration. He wondered who owned it.

  He let himself in with his own key—no buzzing in for him—and went to Ruth’s counter. She resembled a dress up doll; Barbie at the office. Her clothes were perfectly tailored and obviously new and expensive.

  “Who’s car is that? The Studebaker?”

  “Is that what it is?” she said. She stood up and gaped out the door where the car was throwing off glaring reflections on the office lobby. “That’s Adrian’s.”

  “What?” Corley yelped as if goosed.

  “Adrian Beck’s,” clarified Ruth, as if he hadn’t heard.

  Yellow was a confirmation of everything Corley believed about Adrian Beck. No timid, cowed person could restore a car and paint it that color; nobody. Corley examined his own values: even he wouldn’t be so bold. It was an almost teenaged statement of wild abandon. Not something done by a seriously unassertive engineer. Wally was a fool.

  From his office in the front corner of the building, Corley watched the car as the afternoon drifted slowly by. He waited for the office to clear out, hoping to see Adrian Beck approach the car and drive it away. But five o’clock came and the parking lot emptied except for the Studebaker and his aggressive red Audi on opposite sides. They resembled book ends or pieces in a war game, red versus yellow on a black asphalt game board.

  Six o’clock and night arrived, the lot grew dark. The Lark glowed like radium, as if vibrating with its own source of energy, while the Audi had long since faded into the shadows. That made Corley angry, seeing his car overpowered by this newcomer. He perceived it as a challenge, one he’d lost before it began. And the infuriating part was that Adrian didn’t even know there was a contest.

  Corley decided to wait him out. He pretended to work on things until eight thirty. He forgot hunger and even gave up pretending; just sat at his desk and watched the parking lot like a hunter waiting for game.

  Nine o’clock and he was too restless to wait any longer. His stomach growled and Corley felt like growling with it. He strode down the long hallway unlocked the front door and paused, wondering. How would Beck get out? Probably had his own key, given the overtime hours he put in, another sign that Wally trusted him too much.

  Stupid Wally. Corley’s anger grew until it seethed inside him. Why wouldn’t he see? Unable to hold back the emotions any longer, Corley shoved the door away and pushed into the lot. He ran furtively down the handicapped ramp, keeping close to the building, went up to the car and took out his keys. He stuck one key between his fingers. sticking out an inch and ran it across the side of the Studebaker. All the way, front to back, and back again, the lines crisscrossing, leaving scars of bare metal in the paint. He moved to the hood and slashed back and forth, consumed with a raging energy. Then the passenger side.

  His anger subsided quickly and he stopped, head down, breathing like an overworked draft horse. He ran to his triumphant red Audi and drove past the vanquished Studebaker.

  Adrian stretched to get the kinks out of his back and stepped away from his desk. Finally he was finished. He looked at the clock: nine-fifteen. It had taken hours longer than he’d thought to straighten out the tangled wiring on the blue lined paper, now covered with scratches of red and green from his editing. He rolled up the drawings, held them with a rubber band and took the package down to CAD. He left a note asking Zack to please make the changes.

  He straightened bent shoulders and walked wearily to the door. His keys clinked as he rotated them in the lock. In the cold dark night, stopping at the top of the stoop to take in lungs full of cold air, his breath wafted out in white puffs.

  His steps bounced a little as he took the stairs, and he half skipped to the car, grateful to be free of the desk. He stopped. The car—his beautiful new Lark—had been savagely vandalized. He gaped at the scratches in the paint, winced at the damage. The implied fury of such an attack took his breath away and he felt momentarily faint.

  My God. Who would do such a thing? He spun around, searching the lot, as if whoever had committed such a heinous crime would still be there, lurk
ing in the shadows. Peering into the trees across the Platte River, their branches waving like skeletal arms, he imagined an army of ghostly vandals. The dull metal dumpsters across the way became hiding places for unknown attackers.

  The night was suddenly hostile, a cold alien place. He jerked open the door and turned the key. The engine roared and he put it into gear, flooding it. The engine died. Twisted the key again, once –wait— twice. It fired and he let it idle, forcing himself to be calm. Was something rushing toward him, even now? He resolutely held his gaze steady, shifted slowly and let the car back up.

  In a way it was an anti-climax. A routine drive in the night down a curvy road along a sunken ribbon of water. But that night, with the Lark safely stashed in the locked garage, he sat in the living room and wondered who would do such a thing? And he decided not to fly to Utah, but to drive.

  No way the bastards would get another chance.

  He left at three, when the stars looked down like eyes of ice. The road was a ribbon of gray beneath the beams of the old car, the cab an oasis of warmth in an endless cold desert. He drove without the radio, so there was no human contact. Stopping for gas and coffee he waited for dawn to rise behind him, and kept his mind deliberately closed to any but surface thoughts.

  Who would –?

  Shut up.

  There were occasional trucks on the Interstate, and the Lark flew past them like her namesake, darting around like a bird in flight. The lights at the exits glowed, grew bright and faded. The white lines vanished beneath him. In a way he was reminded of his original flight to Denver, now he was fleeing from it.

  It’s happening again. I’m fleeing from demons in the night.

  Who would—?

  Shut up.

  At Empire he left the highway and swung north on highway 40. That turned west at Granby and he stopped when the sky turned light at Steamboat Springs. He ate an omelet in Craig and listened to the news on the television. The Utah border arrived by one in the afternoon, and he passed Vernal, Roosevelt and Heber City, finally getting stuck on Interstate 80 during a late rush hour. He passed the Great Salt Lake and began to feel his pulse quickening, like a racehorse returning to the stable. It felt good to be here, almost like home. It was far away from phantoms in the night.

  Dulled now with fatigue and caffeine, Adrian mulled over his reaction. The attack on the Studebaker had spooked him in its randomness. The ferocity of the slashes made it seem supernatural, not of this world. He thought of his fears when he first came to Denver and shuddered as if they had all been stored away, waiting for a chance to pop up like some demented Jack-in-the-box.

  Who does such things? He wondered about hate and fear as he drove, coming no closer to understanding than anyone before him ever had. There is evil in the world, he thought bitterly. There is pain and awful things and...he felt the sting of tears and decided it was from the glare of the setting sun.

  The Lark was a champ, the little engine that could. It ran with its few gauges resting comfortably within spec, purring along the road as if it could drive through centuries, not just decades.

  But Adrian couldn’t. He stopped at Tooele, the familiar truck stop, and was given his old room. He ate at McDonald’s and lay on a familiar bed and spied out the window at the car below, willing it to come safely through the night.

  At nine-thirty he called Maggie.

  “I’m in Utah.”

  “And I’m in bed,” she answered.

  “So early?” The sound of her voice settled his emotion s like a shot of bourbon.

  “I wanted to read. I miss you.”

  “Why don’t you come out here?” The thought came to him, as if from someone else. He heard her sit up, doubtless surprised. He imagined her topless, the sheet falling away, retreated from that thought as unworthy, but it stayed anyway.

  “Today’s Tuesday,” he rushed on. “Fly out on Friday. We’ll stay at the casino, talk things over. Can you get away?”

  “I don’t know. Adrian, this is sudden. Is anything the matter?”

  Was anything the matter? Well, I’m being pursued by demons that I thought were in my head but I find that they might be real, which is sort of freaking me out and I’m imagining you in bed which is a lot better, so, no, nothing’s the matter, “Can you come?” he asked.

  “I guess.” He heard her shifting gears, considering his sudden proposal. “I could...sure, I’ll call you with plane info. Will you be at the job site?”

  “You bet. Call me and I’ll pick you up.”

  “Okay.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.” She paused before hanging up and added, “And I’m topless.”

  She hung up.

  37 – A Stranger in the Night

  Corley was driving home from a late dinner when he saw the light. Just below the turquoise ‘L’ in Control-logics on the tan canopy, the window to the accounting office glowed like a flashlight through the mouth of a dark Jack O-Lantern.

  It stood out in the night like a beacon. Corley skidded his Audi to a stop in the middle of Platte River Drive.

  A light sleet, more mist than a real storm, made the street Hollywood wet, reflecting lights in blues and greens and exaggerated reds. At nine o’clock on a Wednesday evening there was no traffic to protest his sudden stop. There was also no reason for a light in the building.

  Corley ducked his head to see better and counted from the front door to the left: lobby, Stuart’s office, Dean’s office, accounting. Why a light?

  A stab of paranoia hit him. No one should be there. Corley observed the parking lot; there were no cars. A certainty grew within him that someone was looking for evidence of the robberies. The Audi spun into the parking lot, skidding to a stop in front of the main door.

  He jumped out and ran up the stairs, cashmere coat flying like a cape behind him, and lost several seconds fumbling for keys in the dim light beneath the awning. He shoved the key, twisted and pulled –the door tended to stick—and heard the tumbler move with a very loud click.

  Corley threw open the door, rushed the three steps to the interior door and wrestled with it for a moment, his keys scratching against the lock. Too loud! He inhaled to calm himself, made himself move more deliberately, make less noise, but adrenalin sloshed through him like a nerve bomb, jerking his body like a puppet. The key turned and the lock snapped open. He raced into the dim lobby, left down the hall and threw open the door to accounting.

  The room was dark. For a moment he stood in the doorway, confused. How could it be dark? He had seen a light. That meant someone had heard him. And that meant whoever did it was still here.

  Corley snapped a switch and fluorescents flickered overhead, clicking on sequentially in the long room to illuminate desks, chairs, file cabinets, bookshelves...and nothing else. There was no sign of movement, no trace of an intruder. He rolled his eyes without moving his head, attuned for any sense of motion. There was nothing.

  Corley decided that the intruder had moved faster than expected and made it to the hall. From there, where could he go? Not back through the lobby, Corley would have seen him. He listened to the silence. The building made no sound. No creaking. no settling, no conspicuous footsteps. He pushed the switch and the lights went out.

  So, not the lobby. That meant whoever was here had gone down the hall. And the hall led to...Adrian Beck’s office. If anyone was poking around here it would be Beck. Corley moved slightly into the dark hall and peered down its shadowy length, considering how the building ran. That way led to Beck’s office, and the door to the shop. There was no way out of the shop except the door that led back to the lobby.

  Corley made a plan. He turned, not to follow the mysterious burglar, but back toward the lobby. He stopped behind the receptionists desk and fished around; Ruth kept a flashlight back here, ever since the hailstorm last September had taken out the power. He cupped his hand over the lens and switched it on. A dull glow appeared.

  He inspected the door to the warehouse. He returne
d to the desk and got a cardboard box which he tore apart and folded until he had a serviceable wedge. He stuck this beneath the door and tugged at the handle, jamming it shut.

  He stood and thought. The lights for the entire warehouse were directly inside this door. If he went around the way Beck had gone he’d have to cross the huge dark area until he got back here. Of course, he had a flashlight and Beck couldn’t get behind him, so the advantage was his. Besides...he flexed his shoulders, feeling strength flow across them, if Beck insisted on fighting, Corley would release some of his pent up frustration. He smiled, relishing that idea.

  Down the dark hall, checking locked doors as he went, he arrived at the warehouse door. He shined his light on the Everyone entering must wear safety glasses sign and snicked the door handle. He stepped into darkness.

  The warehouse was a cavernous space. Corley could easily imagine flocks of bats wheeling in the high spaces. The sounds of his footsteps echoed from faraway walls and came back in bassy muffled thumps. He stepped past hulking machinery—power panels, drill presses, the CNC machine for bending steel. In the gloom they could be boulders, or animals waiting to pounce. He dodged around an arc welder, shone the light down rows of parts shelves. He shook his head in frustration. Beck could be hiding anywhere.

  “Beck!” he yelled into the shadows. His voice echoed back amplified, booming and distorted. “Beck! I’m coming for you. You can’t hide from me!” Across an open space, the yellow lines painted on the gray floor reflected slightly, and he saw the wall to the office. There was the door, there was the light box.

  He was reaching forward when a pile of boxes to his right exploded, raining down on him, He dropped the flashlight which hit the floor with a tinkle of glass and went out. He twisted and struggled with boxes, shoving them away with fury, and saw someone running away. The figure was shrouded in a dark coat that flared behind him like wings. His shoes beat a staccato tapping on the concrete as he fled.

  Corley threw a last box from him and leaped to follow. He shrugged out of his coat, and ran in the dark after the footsteps. He caught glimpses of the figure in the shadows and had the odd sense that the size was wrong. He sped up and hit his shin on a metal bar sticking out of a stack. Pain bellowed up his leg like a lion’s roar and he hopped on one foot for several yards, dancing with agony, pressing on in mute rage.