by Tom Deitz
“Where’s Don?” she spat abruptly. “Just tell me that one thing: what have you done with Don?”
Robert eased behind her, clasped his arms on her shoulders, and drew her back. “Now, Liza-Bet,” he murmured, “you know you’re not supposed to talk to ’im. We’re probably violatin’ procedure right now! Might wind up with a mistrial, or somethin’.”
Calvin said nothing but he regarded the woman calmly, meeting her eyes straight on without flinching. “I haven’t done anything to him,” he stated quietly. “I’ve—
“He needs a lawyer,” her escort interrupted quickly, urging her away. “They’ve got one on the way, but he’s gotta come from Jesup, and it’s gonna take a while.”
“I want to call my lawyer,” Calvin insisted.
Robert raised a warning eyebrow. “All in good time.”
“I’m entitled to a call…”
“I know,” the policeman replied softly, “but—”
“You’re a goddamned murderer,” Liza-Bet snarled and whirled around, then stamped back down the hall toward a second, closed door.
Robert regarded Calvin apologetically. “Something strange is goin’ on, Mr. McIntosh, and I wish to hell you’d help ’em, ’stead of bein’ so damned obscure.”
“Part of it they wouldn’t believe,” Calvin told him simply, sensing that this man was not overtly hostile, though he had more reason than most to be. “And the rest I’d need other folks to corroborate.”
“We could get ’em,” Robert offered.
“It’d be too much of a risk for them,” Calvin replied. “They’ve got problems of their own.”
And then his tormentor poked him none-too-gently in the back, and they were off again, up more stairs to a simple barred door (unlocked, Calvin noticed to his surprise, though there was another electronic bolt) which opened upon a short corridor lined with cells five to a side.
Another set of bars slammed in Calvin’s face, and he was once more alone. At least this cell—the second on the eastern side—was better than his earlier one: fresh cream walls (though they were pockmarked with paper wads and gum), newish furniture, decent bedding, better light. And there was a sink, a toilet, and a built-in desk, as well as the cot he flopped down on. A few minutes later there was breakfast, served by the same hard-looking woman who had stashed his clothes. Calvin eyed the coffee and doughnuts a little dubiously, wondering if his stomach was up to them, but finally decided to risk it and found the coffee to be surprisingly good—probably from the same Dunkin’ Donuts he had spotted on his ride into town.
He asked Old Hardface if he could make a call, but was rewarded with a terse “I can’t give you permission, I’m just the dispatcher.”
So Calvin had no choice but to sit and wait and wonder—and increasingly, as the minutes dawdled by, to worry about his friends.
Were they still alive, or was he already fretting in vain? Don still hadn’t turned up here, but he didn’t know what that portended, whether escape, holdup, or death.
Death: that brought back memories of Allison. He almost couldn’t stand the thought of that pretty little girl lying dead, got an awful sick feeling in his stomach every time that image paraded across his inner eye. But at least he’d never known her when she was alive. Brock, though, and Robyn, and Don—and Dave—them he did know: had talked to them, laughed with them, touched them, and felt them aflame with the supple energy of life. The notion that they too might now be lying cold and stiff and empty almost made him gag. That it would be his fault was more than he could tolerate. Against his will, he felt his eyes misting.
For God’s sake, get a grip on yourself, McIntosh! he told himself firmly. Self-pity won’t do anybody any good.
With that, he began once more to consider his options. If he was extremely lucky, the legal system would grind along and get him in contact with a lawyer. (Had they said something about one coming from Jesup? He hardly remembered.) Hopefully, there’d be bail. (Could Sandy afford to post bond for a murderer?) But he had no idea how long that would take, and he imagined Spearfinger would have accomplished her goal long before then.
That left him back at escape, and that seemed extremely unlikely—unless he could get thirty seconds alone with his uktena scale.
But it was sequestered as evidence, so Hardface had intimated. Lord, he hoped they didn’t fool with it too much. He could just imagine some lab tech somewhere trying to do analysis on it and cutting himself while he was wishing he was one of the humpin’ bunnies in the next cage—and then slam, bam… The idea struck Calvin as ludicrous enough to prompt a chuckle, but then noises reached him from the floor below, only a little muffled by distance: doors slamming, shouting, and footsteps running on tile, while a woman (maybe Old Hardface the Food-bringer?) shrieked hysterically, “The little son-of-a-bitch bit me! The little son-of-a-bitch bit the goddamned shit out of me!”
Calvin wondered who the little son-of-a-bitch was and whether the woman had had her shots. More to the point, he wondered whether the “little son-of-a-bitch” had had his.
Chapter XXIII: Frayed Nerves
(Whidden, Georgia—mid-morning)
“Catch him!”
“Where’d he go?”
“Damn! Shit! Fuck! He bit me, goddamn it!”
“There he is!”
“Shit!”
Calvin couldn’t help perking up at the explosions of shouts and profanity that were wafting their way up from the downstairs offices to his cell. He couldn’t tell for certain what was going on, but more doors were slamming and (apparently) being locked; things were falling over (or being pushed)—and at least one of them had to have been a file cabinet, to judge by the volume of the metallic crash and the wails of an unfamiliar female voice shrieking, “I just finished alphabetizin’ them records!”
There was also a veritable cacophony of footfalls, one fairly rhythmic and light-sounding, the others (usually accompanied by heavy, uncomfortable grunts) those of larger bodies bouncing off things and each other. Calvin heard glass shatter; the lights flickered and went out—and then, abruptly, there was silence. Curiosity having gotten the best of him, he padded to the cell door and peered outside.
“Where’d he go?” a man yelled from somewhere directly beneath Calvin’s feet. Calvin had no trouble understanding him, though his words were muffled by a thump and the rattling of a lock a fair bit closer.
“Shit if I know, I thought you had ’im.”
“Where’d he come from, anyway?”
“Hell-if-I-know!”
“Hell, you better know!”
“I—”
“Shit! He’s locked the goddamned door!”
An alarm began to shriek and bells to clang, all accompanied by the nasty buzz of something electrical shorting out. The sharp, bitter odor of ozone filled the air even on the second floor, and Calvin found himself gazing out into a gloomy corridor bathed only in the dim light of the thunderous sky diffusing through cell windows. Even the red-eye of the electronic security system on the barred stairwell door was out, and Calvin could tell by the crack of light dimly visible at one side that it hadn’t been closed properly in the first place, which meant it had probably never worked correctly—which in turn implied that the locals rarely dealt with really dangerous prisoners. That might give him an advantage.
And below, chaos exploded once more:
“What the fuck?”
“Little son-of-a-bitch must’ve pulled the fire alarm.”
“Fire alarm, hell! Must’ve pulled the circuit breaker!”
“My computer!” the woman wailed again.
“Marvin, you get that goddamned door open an’ I’ll check downstairs. Abner, you get a flashlight and investigate up top. Shit…son-of-a-bitch! We gotta get some friggin’ light in here!”
“I ain’t got no friggin’ flashlight!”
Calvin couldn’t resist a grin. Someone had evidently set his captors into a top-notch tizzy.
That was when he saw the stairwell door
slowly open and a hunched-over shadow appear there.
For a moment Calvin’s heart stuck in his throat, for the outline was humpbacked and shrunken, exactly like Spearfinger. He suddenly realized, too, that the walls of his prison were stone and there was probably no reason in the world that the hag couldn’t make her way there through the earth, rise up through them, and come at him that way. But then the shadow moved again, and he heard its steps, and they sounded too light, too sure, to be his adversary’s.
And then a boy’s voice whispered hoarsely from the wall beside his door. “Calvin? Hey, Cal, man it’s me, Brock!”
“Brock! Jesus, guy, what’re you doin’ here?”
“Tryin’ to rescue you,” the boy replied breathlessly, glancing over his shoulder. “I’ve locked ’em out downstairs, but I’ve only got about a minute ’fore they do in the door.”
And with that the shadow moved to the other side of the bars and Calvin got a good look at the boy.
He was wearing the oiliest, scuzziest jeans and T-shirt Calvin had ever seen, had smeared every visible bit of skin with either dirt or ashes—and had somehow become a brunette in the bargain, probably by the application of spray-dye, to judge by the trace of chemical odor that lingered around his dull-looking hair.
“Like my disguise?” Brock asked eagerly, grinning like a fool. “I was afraid they’d recognize me, so I had to kinda switch things around.”
“You better get the hell outta here!”
“No, man, I’ve gotta get you out. The”—he swallowed nervously—“the ground’s poundin’ again!”
“Shit!”
“Yeah. It’s part of it, ain’t it? The ground poundin’? Part of the magic.”
“Yeah.”
A pause, then: “I know about you. I—”
A lock clicked, a door creaked, and footsteps sounded in the hall, slow and fumbly. Calvin and Brock held their breath, but the steps receded down the stairs—evidently in quest of the fuse box.
“What’d you do, anyway?” Calvin wondered.
A low chuckle. “Knocked the water cooler over into the computer terminal. It wasn’t grounded or nothin’. Then zipped into the hall, locked the door behind me, and pulled a bunch of switches. And then I locked—”
“All that?”
“Don told me how. I—”
More steps, and a light flared fitfully at the foot of the stairs. Abner had apparently located a flashlight.
“Quick! How can I help?”
“Find the scale,” Calvin whispered urgently. “It’s in the basement somewhere: room marked STORAGE. There’s some kinda secret tunnel between here and the court-house—that’s where they interrogated me. Now get the hell outta here!”
“Figured as much.” Brock nodded. “I—”
The flashlight beam lanced up toward the second-floor landing. Brock flung himself in one smooth leap to the sliver of wall beside the stairwell door, just as a head poked cautiously into the corridor. The boy flattened against the stone, melting into shadow.
Calvin wrenched off a shoe and flung it skittering down the hall in the opposite direction from the stairs.
The figure—sure enough, it was Abner—dashed into the corridor: revolver poised in one hand while his flashlight prodded the far shadows with the other—and thereby missed Brock, probably because Abner was not expecting his quarry to be so close.
Until it was too late.
As soon as Abner’s back had cleared the doorway, Brock dived for the opening, careening into the startled deputy with enough force to set him staggering. The man swore, half-danced a series of steps farther into the hall, then whirled, sending flashlight beams everywhere. Calvin caught the glint of a .38 and hoped Brock wasn’t so foolhardy as to go up against something like that.
But the boy was gone, though a final explosion of shouts from downstairs gave proof that he was not forgotten: “There he is again!”
“Catch him!”
“Damn, I missed!”
And then the lights came on, only to flicker off once more and stay that way.
“You’re still here, anyway,” the deputy growled, when he saw Calvin staring calmly through the cell door. “Get back over there and set down!”
Calvin complied obediently, but he could tell that the man was giving the whole corridor a thorough once-over.
In less than a minute he was back, holding Calvin’s decoy shoe at arm’s length as though he expected it to bite him.
He dropped it onto the floor outside the cell and kicked it through the bars to him.
“You know anything ’bout this?”
Calvin picked up the sneaker and scrutinized it with exaggerated care before slipping it back on. “It’s my shoe,” he stated flatly. “Or technically, the shoe you gave me to wear.”
“Don’t get smart, boy!” the deputy snapped. “You mind tellin’ me what it’s doin’ at the end of the hall?”
“I threw it at something.”
“At what?”
“The floor and the wall.”
“I’m warnin’ you boy! Mr. Police Chief ain’t ’round here now.”
“I’m tellin’ you the exact truth.”
“You know that boy that ’uz up here?”
“Yes.”
“Who is he?”
“A friend of mine.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know.” Which was the truth: Calvin had never learned Brock’s legal name, but he hoped this grilling ended quickly, because he was afraid that sooner or later this dim bulb would ask him something he couldn’t answer with an evasion and still be truthful.
“What’d he want?”
“To see me.”
“He some kind of accomplice?”
“Not by my choice.”
“Shit! You a liar, boy!”
“No,” Calvin countered calmly. “I absolutely am not.”
“You got a plan?”
“No.” Which was also true, technically. He had desires, but no clear idea how to execute them. That did not constitute a plan in his book.
“What’d you tell him?’
“I can’t remember, exactly.”
The man’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What about other than exactly?”
“It wouldn’t be smart for me to say.”
“I’ll tell you what’d be smart,” Abner snarled, pushing his face up close to the bars. “It’d be smart for you to watch your mouth. It’d be real easy to mistake you for a rat in this light. And we shoot rats ’round here.”
“You’d have a problem, then.”
“Why’s that?”
“’Cause then who’d you blame when folks kept turning up dead without their livers?”
“Abner, you okay?” a voice shouted up from the floor below.
“Yeah, I reckon,” Abner called back.
“Then get your skinny ass down here and help us pick up this goddamn file cabinet!” A pause, and then nearly as loudly, to the folks in the sheriff’s office, “No, that’s okay, sheriff; reckon the little son-of-a-bitch got clean away.”
“Right!” Abner called back, then aimed a searing glare at Calvin. “I’ll be seein’ you again right soon, never fear.”
*
The rustle of something slithering through the bank of kudzu ten yards to her right made Robyn start. She swallowed nervously and peered out from where she’d been avoiding the current sprinkle in one of the range of bricked-in archways that comprised the lowest level on the back side of the old Whidden Hotel, but found her view blocked by a stack of two-by-four scaffolding. (The building was presently undergoing a lull in restoration and the supporting clutter of construction materials and equipment in its long-neglected hinder regions made it an ideal base for clandestine activities—when it was not obstructing Robyn’s line of sight.) Leaning against a granite pillar across from her, Don merely added apprehension to his already grim and unhappy expression. “What?” he began. “I—”
Robyn had just raised a fi
nger to shush him to silence when a final scrabbling ended in a frustrated grunt and indecipherable mutter that was probably profane. She gave herself a mental kick in the butt for being so jumpy. It was only her brother, failing at stealth at last. For his part, Don simply exhaled slowly and looked relieved.
“Your turn, sis.” Brock grinned from under the coat of grime he’d had so much fun applying twenty minutes before. It was rain-streaked now, and he looked even scruffier than when Calvin had seen him.
“Took you long enough,” Robyn snorted. “What’d you find out?”
Brock eased in beside them and casually commenced removing the clothing he had liberated from an unmonitored dumpster near the point where the railroad track crossed the town line. He seemed enormously pleased with himself.
“What about Calvin?” Robyn persisted. “You did find him, didn’t you?”
“It’s ’bout what Don told us to expect,” Brock panted, tugging on fresh jeans. “They’ve got him in a cell on the second floor. He looks okay, but he’s real worried, you can tell. The rest is just like we figured: he ain’t escaped ’cause he don’t have his scale. That’s what we’ve gotta get.”
“What I’ve gotta get,” Robyn corrected sourly.
“It was your choice that I check things out,” Brock told her, looking up for an instant before applying himself to the grime on his face and arms with considerable assist from the drizzle.
“Fortunately,” he continued, “Don was right about their security bein’ really sloppy. All I had to do was wander in and look homeless and lost, and then ask ’em where my mother was, and keep my eyes open while I got the lay of the land. But then they started askin’ me stuff I couldn’t answer real good, and then I tried to split, but one grabbed me, and I bit her.”
“What kinda stuff?”
“Oh, just my name and all.”
“What’d you tell ’em?”
“That I didn’t remember. I was tryin’ to play poor little shell-shocked runaway. Made a big deal outta suddenly actin’ scared, like, and tryin’ to get away. ‘Accidentally’ knocked a bunch of stuff over, and then tipped the water cooler over on a computer and shorted the lights out. After that it was a cinch to zip into the hall, lock the doors, and trash the fuse box and fire alarm.”