With Miguel lying across the front seat of the car, Larry backed out of his parking spot, keeping one eye on the state trooper until the man disappeared into the rest stop. Then Larry drove around the back of the big building, where it was dark and shadowy and where he could do what he wanted to do without being seen. Wouldn’t take him long. He had just pulled to a stop in a nice dark patch of shadow when a pickup truck squealed around the corner and screeched to a stop a few feet in front of Larry’s Audi.
Larry frowned. Obviously not a cop, so what the hell was this about?
The pickup’s door opened and a thick man in grease-spotted overalls stepped out and walked quickly toward Larry’s car. Larry could see the tire iron the man tried to conceal behind his leg as he walked.
Can’t let this yokel see inside the car, Larry thought, so he got out of his car. As he walked toward the man to meet him halfway, Larry looked around. They were in the shadows of the building. The nearest light post wasn’t near enough to cast much light on the scene. Most importantly, no one else was in sight. All the other cars were around the front of the building or way over by the gas pumps.
“What’d you stop me for?” Larry asked as the guy approached.
“I saw what you did,” the man said, keeping the tire iron tucked behind his leg.
“Yeah, what’d I do?”
“Hit that kid.”
“What kid? I’m by myself tonight.”
“Bullshit. I was heading into the rest stop and I saw you through your window. You punched that kid right in the face.”
“Not sure what you think you saw, pal, but you got it wrong.”
“Yeah? Let me see inside your car then.”
Larry shrugged. As he did, he turned his head a little. Still no one else in sight despite the number of cars entering and exiting the rest stop all the time. The poor bastard had chosen the worst possible place to ambush Larry. Although maybe the guy had chosen this spot for the very reason Larry liked it. It was secluded. Maybe the guy wanted a quiet spot where he could try to beat Larry up without anyone seeing. If so, he was going to find out that he’d made one hell of a mistake. Well, he was going to find that out anyway.
“Sure, take a look,” Larry said.
He stepped aside so the man could walk to his car.
“You first,” the guy said.
Larry shrugged again and walked over to his Audi. He didn’t think the guy would hit him with the tire iron until he’d confirmed his suspicion. Waiting like that was going to be his second mistake. As Larry reached his car, he said, “Take a look. No one there.”
The man gave a wary sidelong look at Larry before leaning toward the dark windows of Larry’s car. And Larry struck, reaching out, palming the back of the man’s head and shoving his face forward, slamming it into the steel doorframe. He was careful not to put the man’s face through his car window, aiming instead for the frame around the window. And he’d executed the move to perfection. The guy’s face cracked against the metal and he dropped the tire iron and slid to the pavement beside it. He moaned. Still conscious. Good, Larry thought. He knelt down and gently slapped the man’s face until the guy groaned. “What…”
“Good, you’re awake.”
The man groaned again.
“You are awake, right?” Larry asked. “Because I need you to pay attention.”
The guy coughed and a mouthful of blood covered his chin. Larry looked down and was glad to see that none had splashed his clothing.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Okay, so here’s the thing, pal…” he said, then he started punching the man in his already ruined face. With brutal shots he hit the man again and again, hit him like he was driving nails with his fist…pounding the guy in his already broken nose, his eyes, his possibly broken cheek, the side of his neck. Each punch had violent force and serious muscle behind it. Each punch drew a grunt or cry. Each drew blood. When the guy started crying, Larry stopped the savage beating. He rolled the guy up on his side, pulled a wallet from his back pocket, and removed the driver’s license from it.
“Okay, Mr. Richard Karl Meacham,” Larry said, reading the license, “looks like we’re almost done here.” He thumbed through the wallet. “Nice couple of kids in this picture,” he said. “They yours? Sweet little things. Do they live with you at Twenty-two Forest Road, right there in Somerville, New Jersey?”
The bloody guy said nothing.
“Hey, dickhead, I asked you a question.” Larry put his thumb against the man’s squashed nose and pushed. The man yelped.
“Answer me. They live with you, pal, these sweet little kids? Right there at Twenty-two Forest Road?”
The man nodded his head and sighed. As he did, blood bubbled at his lips.
“Somerville, New Jersey, huh?” Larry said. “You live there with these sweet little kids, probably got a sweet little wife, too, I bet, all right there on Forest Road in Somerville, New Jersey. Hey, what’re you doing so far from home? Wait, don’t answer that. I don’t give a shit. What I do give a shit about is you keeping this little chat between us private. Don’t tell anyone. Especially the cops. Don’t even tell your pretty little wife or your sweet little kids. Because if anything…I mean anything makes me think one of you told someone about this, well, I’ll have to pay a visit to you and the family and find out which one of you Meachams opened your dumb-shit mouth. Am I going to have to do that, Richard? Am I?”
For a moment, the man said nothing. When Larry raised his thumb toward the guy’s face again, though, he shook his head violently and said through broken teeth and broken lips, “No, you won’t. I won’t say anything. I swear to Jesus, not a word.”
Larry patted Meacham on the chest, drawing a flinch. He wiped the blood from his fist on the guy’s greasy overalls, then stood and took a quick look around. Way over in the light, a car pulled away from a gas pump. No one else in sight.
“I believe you, Richard,” Larry said. “But I’m going to hang onto your license as a keepsake, all right? Just to remember this moment by. That okay with you?”
Meacham nodded.
“Need help getting back to your truck?” Larry asked.
The guy wisely shook his head.
“Okay then,” Larry said. “See you around.”
He slid back behind the wheel of his Audi, checked that Miguel was still out cold, then put the car in gear and drove around the crumpled form of Richard Meacham. He’d wait until the next rest stop to do what he had been about to do when Meacham interrupted him. Dickhead. Maybe one day Larry would take a trip to Somerville, New Jersey anyway, just for fun. They really did look like sweet little kids.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
ALICE NEVER REALLY liked driving. It was a useful skill to have, as it got her most places she wanted to go from the time she was old enough to drive until she moved to New York, where the city’s public transportation system rendered travel by car virtually unnecessary for her. But though the skill had come in handy for so many years, she never really enjoyed it. She knew that some people loved it. They put their ragtops down, cranked music, and roared along highways or country roads with the wind whipping and the music pounding and they felt free. But to Alice, driving a car was simply a way to get from point A to point B.
Except when she drove Daniel’s BMW. She loved the aesthetics of the car. The burled-wood dash, the leather steering wheel cover, the robin’s-egg blue color of the exterior. And there was something about the way her butt felt in the seat, the way the steering wheel felt under her hands—the car hugged her and she wanted to hug it back.
She downshifted and cruised up FDR Drive with the radio tuned to a station playing nothing but ’80s music, which she was almost embarrassed to admit she loved. “Sunglasses at Night” was playing and if it hadn’t been dangerous, she might have slipped on her shades.
In the cup holder beside her, her cell phone twittered. She turned down the music and looked at the caller ID.
“Hi, Daniel,” she said.
&nb
sp; “Hey. I got your message. You on your way to your mother’s?”
She felt a little guilty lying to him, but even if she had been honest and told him all about the little blond boy, Daniel never would have understood her need to just pick up and drive to New Hampshire at night. He wouldn’t have believed her anyway. He would have thought she was imagining things, that this was her “crazy genius” at work. Heck, she wasn’t sure she believed herself. But she had to see this through.
“Yeah, I’m on my way. You sure you don’t mind me taking your BMW?”
“Hey, mi car-sa, su car-sa.”
She paused. “You’re kidding, right? That was awful.”
“I think I’m a little tipsy,” he replied.
“You out with clients?”
“I hope so.”
“You don’t know if you’re out with clients?” she asked.
“I mean, I don’t know if they’re clients yet. I hope they will be. Haven’t gotten them to agree to anything. But I’ve got my A game going. Full throttle schmooze.”
She paused. “You okay? You sound funny.”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Still got that headache, I guess. I should drink a bit less, I suppose, but it’s hard not to drink when you’re buying rounds for these guys, you know?”
“Okay,” she said. “Sleep late in the morning if you can. And try not to drink tomorrow, if you can help it.”
“Yeah, okay. Say hi to your mother.”
“I will. Good night.”
Alice put the phone back in the cup holder. She frowned. When had they stopped saying “I love you” when they ended phone calls?
She looked in her rearview mirror. New York City was no longer in sight. She wondered what lay ahead of her. When she reached New Hampshire, would she know where to go next? Where was the boy leading her? What did he want from her?
She knew no answers would be coming soon so she turned the music back up. Pat Benatar was singing about the “Shadows of the Night.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“JESUS CHRIST,” KENNY said. “Boone? How’d you get here? What the hell happened to you?”
He moved out of the doorway and let Boone stumble past him and collapse in a chair just inside the living room. Boone felt drained, like every muscle in his body had been used to its fullest and had nothing left to give. His sweat-slicked hair was pasted to his forehead.
“Boone? You okay?”
Boone nodded. He took a few deep breaths. It felt good to be inside again, though he wished he was in his own apartment. He couldn’t shake the constant anxiety. His nerves were piano wires. But at least he was inside again. He took another breath and filled Kenny in on everything, from the e-mails to the stacked pictures, to his Internet research and the Old Man of the Mountain, to the voices and their threats and the flying picture frames. He told him about his harrowing trip across the street. And for the first two blocks, every step he took away from his building, every step he took toward Kenny’s apartment, felt heavier and heavier, and caused him anxiety that felt like a physical ache in his bones, in his gut. He told how each street he came to seemed like a river of molten lava that would burn him alive if he tried to cross. But he did cross, each time. After the first two blocks, his feet were less leaden, his breathing a little less labored. He’d had a bad moment just around the corner, though, a full-blown panic attack that sneaked up on him and left him blind and retching on his knees. After a while—he had no idea how long—he was able to breathe again, and see a little again, and stop hacking as if he was trying to cough up a hairball. He’d had to crawl for a little while, ignoring a few unkind jeers, before he could walk again. But he’d finally made it here.
“Your knees are bleeding.”
Boone felt his bloody knees through the ragged holes he’d worn through the legs of his jeans.
“Let me get something to clean those,” Kenny said.
A moment later he was causing Boone agony by swabbing his wounds with alcohol.
“So what now?” Kenny asked.
“I’m going to New Hampshire.”
“Wow. Where in New Hampshire?”
“I have no idea. I figure I’ll get a message or something when I get up there. Damn it, that hurts, Kenny.”
“Stop being a sissy. How are you going to get there?”
Boone paused. A moment later, Kenny said, “I can’t, Boone. Susie’s upstairs ready to pop. The baby’s coming any hour…no, any minute. And if it doesn’t come by tomorrow, they’re inducing her.”
“They can’t wait another day or two?”
“No way, Boone. First of all, the baby might not choose to wait any longer. He’s almost two weeks late as it is. Second, it’s dangerous to wait too long. They want to do it no later than tomorrow. I’m sorry, buddy, but I can’t drive you.”
Boone nodded. He couldn’t blame Kenny, of course. “Yeah, I figured that was the case. I thought I’d take a car.”
The holes in Boone’s jeans were big enough that Kenny could reach right in and put large adhesive gauze pads on his knees.
“I assume you’re not going to try to rent a car and drive,” Kenny said.
Boone smiled. “Figured I’d take a cab up there, then catch a cab back when I’m done with…whatever.”
“Sounds like a plan. Wait, no it doesn’t. It doesn’t sound like a plan at all. You’re going somewhere but you don’t know where, to do something but you don’t know what.”
“It’s all I can think to do. I’ll head up there and wait for my spirit guide to move me in the right direction.”
“Your spirit guide.”
“Aren’t there such things as spirit guides?” Boone asked.
“Maybe if you’re an Apache Indian.”
“Well, maybe I have one, too. I don’t know what the hell it is. Maybe it’s my dead Uncle Walter. I don’t know. But something wants me to go to New Hampshire and it isn’t going to let me rest until I do.” He paused. “I think.”
“Great plan, Boone.”
“I’ve gotta do this.”
“Yeah, I get it. I can’t leave Susie, but is there anything I can do to help?”
“Loan me a couple hundred? I’ve got some money, but I don’t know how much I’ll need.”
He gave Boone two hundred bucks and found the number of a cab company. A few minutes later, he hung up the phone.
“I negotiated with the dispatcher. They’re charging a flat fee to take you to the New Hampshire border, then the meter starts until you figure out where you want to go. When he drops you, the meter stops. The driver will add the flat fee plus the metered amount and charge twice that to pay him for both getting you there and for his drive back. Got it?”
“How much you think total?”
“I gave him my credit card number.”
“What? You didn’t have to do that.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve got a stake in this, too. I have to get that spirit out of that apartment. You know how much it costs to have the place fumigated for ghosts?”
“Thanks. I’ll pay you back.”
“No problem. Cab will be here in ten minutes.”
When the taxi arrived, Boone, who was waiting by the door, found himself unable to leave Kenny’s apartment. The cabbie honked. Boone almost fainted.
“Boone?”
“I can’t do it. I can’t go back out there.”
“You made it all the way here,” Kenny said. “Four blocks. All you have to do is walk ten feet right now.”
“I can’t.”
It was happening again. Boone’s vision was going gray. He was close to hyperventilating. His temples throbbed.
“I can’t do it.”
“Listen, you don’t have to go to New Hampshire, Boone.”
“I do. I have to go. I just can’t go outside.”
The cabbie honked again.
“You have to go outside if you want to go to New Hampshire,” Kenny said.
“I can’t.”
“Then
don’t. Stay here. Forget about all this.”
“I can’t. I have to go. Help me.”
“You sure?”
“Help me.”
“You’re absolutely sure you want to do this?”
Boone nodded as his sight winked out. He was blind again. Kenny opened the door, took him by the arm, and led him down the stairs to the sidewalk. Boone’s legs gave out and Kenny half carried him to the waiting taxi. He opened a rear door and helped Boone inside.
“What’s the matter with him?” the cabbie asked.
“He’s just nervous. He doesn’t like riding in cars.”
“He’s not gonna get sick, is he? I’m not cleaning up puke tonight.”
“He’s okay,” Kenny said. “But listen, he’s almost blind, okay, so help him out if he needs it…” He paused, then added, “Okay, Antonio? I’ve got your name and cab number and I’ll know if he isn’t treated right, you got me?”
“Sure, sure, but he better not puke.”
“You okay, Boone?”
Boone’s throat was constricted but he could breathe.
“I think I have a fever.”
“You’re just hot from all the sweating. It’s pretty disgusting, actually, all the sweating. But I don’t think you have a fever. So…you okay?”
Boone nodded. “I will be. I think.”
“You’ve got your cell phone, right? Call me and let me know what’s happening, okay?”
“I will.”
After a pause, Kenny said, “I wish I could go with you, Boone, I really do.”
Boone wished he could, too, but somewhere deep down he was starting to wonder if this wasn’t something he had to do by himself, hard as it would be.
“I know you do,” he said, “but that damn baby’s coming soon and your wife selfishly thinks she needs you here.”
Kenny laughed. “Yeah, can you believe her?”
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