For a ghost, though, he sure had a lot of obviously powerful friends, and she was no longer quite convinced she ought to know more than she did.
Which, she thought bitterly, wasn't a whole hell of a lot.
Polly slowed as they neared the entrance.
Mrs. Maurin immediately put a hand on her arm. "It's all right, dear, nothing to worry about. We're just going to talk, that's all, you don't have to worry."
Joanne felt terrible. The apprehension on Polly's face had turned to fear, and her lower lip began to tremble. "Mrs. Maurin is right, honey," she said gently, a gentle touch on the young woman's shoulder. “There isn't anything here now that's going to hurt you."
Polly nodded uncertainly. "I used to like the park."
ioanne managed a smile.
"I don’t anymore."
They stepped through to the other side, and Polly stopped, staring at the ground, hands jammed into her pockets.
"Damn good reason," Mrs. Maurin muttered.
The blacktop path branched in several directions around the small park. Large, leafless trees studded the grassy areas between, and along the divergent paths white-globed lampposts looked like trees themselves. In the center, on a small rise, marble steps led up to a large dome held up by marble pillars, a monument to the Union and Confederate soldiers who fought in the Battle of Chattanooga. The whole park was only a few acres, its perimeter made of trees and shrubs, boulders and iron railings; beyond was the valley in which the city lay, nearly two thousand feet straight down.
"So where is he?" Mrs. Maurin demanded.
A soft wind began to sift through the bare branches, and a handful of dead leaves scuttled across the brown grass.
Joanne looked around before pointing straight ahead. "There.”
Turpin walked toward them from the far end, taking the easily sloping ground slowly, face up to the wind; almost, she realized, as if he were sniffing it, testing it for a sign.
The three women walked toward him, Polly no longer lagging.
"Oh, my," Mrs. Maurin whispered. "Oh, my, honey, if he's not yours, 1 want him.”
Joanne grinned, but said nothing. She was struck again by how almost ordinary he seemed. Not tall, not hefty, the silver-touched brown hair neither giving nor taking age. Almost ordinary. Except for those eyes, the slight slant of them and the dark green of them.
Mrs. Maurin fanned herself with one hand. "My, my, my."
Polly giggled. "Miss Doris, behave yourself."
[oanne relaxed. The girl seemed to be all right now, her expression bright as Richard smiled at her, holding out his hand as he approached. Polly took it and blushed, her gaze skittering away when he told her, quietly, to please call him Richard.
"1 don't want you to be afraid," he said gently, glancing at Joanne.
"I'm not,” Polly said shyly. "Not now."
Another glance, this one an order, and Joanne tilted her head at Mrs. Maurin, taking them a few yards away, out of earshot. It bothered her that she wouldn’t be able to eavesdrop on the interrogation, but she also recognized that her presence might prevent Polly from saying what Richard needed to know.
Mrs. Maurin lit a cigarette once they stopped beneath the nearest tree, blew smoke into the wind, and batted it away before it stung her eyes. "He’s wasting his time, dear. Polly hasn't said a word about that night since it happened."
loanne shrugged; it wasn't her call. "How ... I mean, Polly, is she. . . ?"
Mrs. Maurin smiled. "How bad is she, is that what you want to know?" Another puff, this time over her shoulder. "She's not the best of my babies, no getting around that, but she'll be all right given a little more time. She’s twenty-five, poor child, be twenty-six come April, but she'll always be no more than thirteen or fourteen. If that." Her voice grew melancholy. "Not a bad age to be, when you think about it." "Will she be able to live on her own?”
"Oh, sure, dear. It just takes time, that’s all. And that's what I've plenty of." She laughed through a cloud of smoke. "That, and a whole ton of patience.” Joanne looked over without being obvious about it—Polly was animated, hands gesturing, eyes wide, while Richard nodded as if every word she said was more important to him than anything else he could think of.
Well, she thought grudgingly, he’s damn good, I have to give him that.
Still, she couldn't help checking the park entrance, half expecting to see that black pickup roar between the turrets. She shuddered and hugged herself, rubbing her arms briefly, looking at the sky and the strips of swirling gray that escaped from the black.
"So, honey," said Mrs. Maurin, crushing the cigarette out beneath her sole, "you got a man or what?"
"He was hurt," said Polly sadly. "I know," Richard answered. "He scared me;"
He nodded. "I know. I can tell." "Your eyes are different." Richard smiled. "I know."
The wind began to keen.
The clouds lowered.
A twig snapped off a leaning, twisted tree and flew like a dart until it shattered against the monument steps.
Two couples wandered into the park, looked around and made their disappointment clear by the hunch of their shoulders as they left again, without a sound.
The wind died.
The air began to haze, and outlines softened while the city disappeared.
There was no sound at all but the bell-like sound of Polly's laughter.
Joanne leaned back against a trunk and folded her arms across her chest. Her admiration for Richard’s rapport with the girl had soured into annoyance. She was damp, she was cold, and she couldn't understand what Polly could say that would take them so long. It had been in the middle of the night, for God's sake.
What the hell could she have seen? What the hell could she say that she hadn't already told the police?
She made a soft noise of disgust and watched as Mrs. Maurin lit yet another cigarette, seemingly unconcerned, filling the time with a nonstop monologue about the other girls—there were four—who lived at the halfway house. By her tone, however, there was no mistaking the fact that Polly, to her, was special.
And it didn't seem to matter that Joanne wasn’t really listening.
“It was scary when he tried to grab me."
Til bet it was.”
Polly scratched behind her ear. "There were noises, too, you know.”
"Well, he'd been hit, Polly. He was hurting.1'
"No." She shook her head emphatically. "No, not him. The other one."
A vehicle pulled up at the entrance, its headlights high and glaring. Joanne pushed away from the tree, trying to see past them to whatever lay beyond.
“Fool idiot," Mrs. Maurin grumbled, shading her eyes with one hand. "It ain’t that foggy out."
But it was, loanne thought nervously-, it was foggy enough that she could barely see the tops of the turrets, and they were only about fifty yards away. And foggy enough that the headlights smeared her vision, gave her nothing to focus on until she looked away.
The older woman edged closer.
"Mrs. Maurin," Joanne said, suddenly remembering the house, "in your front hall there, 1 saw some bulletin boards by the door and the staircase."
"Yes. We keep track of who’s going where, and when. Everybody has to sign in or out." A rueful smile. "At least that’s the theory."
"No, I saw those. I mean farther back, by the stairs."
"Oh!" The woman nodded. "The girls call it the Pride Board. You know, when they make something nice to hang up, or when they get a nice letter, things like that."
“Pictures?"
"I don't have a camera."
The headlights didn’t leave.
"Drawings,! mean."
"Why sure. There's Charlie Wills, she's a cute little thing, not much good for anything else, but she sure can use a brush. 1 got the aquarium people to take some small things on consignment last summer for that gift shop they have. Sold them, too. She’ll never be a Rembrandt, but 1 think she'll make enough some day so she can . . She paused and l
ooked up, shook her head. “Move out, I was going to say." She looked at Joanne sideways. “1 hate when they do that, you know. I know it's my job, but I just hate it.”
"What about Polly? Does she draw?"
"All the time, poor thing, all the time.”
Richard watched the girl’s eyes, deer’s eyes caught in a wood, being hunted. He said nothing; he didn't dare.
Finally, she cleared her throat and gave him a false smile. "1 don't know. I mean, Mr. Abbott, he's got this little bitty dog, it looks like silly rat when it's wet, but it wasn't like that. You know? It wasn’t like that."
"It's okay, Polly. I know what you mean."
Wide-eyed, she looked up. "No,” she said. “Oh no, you don’t know at alL”
Joanne clamped down her excitement. "Where are—" "Hush." Mrs. Maurin held up a finger and looked over Joanne’s shoulder. "Well, damn, she's gone now."
Joanne turned around, and saw the girl shifting her weight from foot to foot, bobbing her head, shaking it, bobbing it again.
“Damn."
Mrs. Maurin lifted her chin. "Polly? Girl? You come on over here, now, you hear? Time we were getting back to the house." Then she lowered her voice. "I’m sorry, Sergeant, but when she gets that way, she's gone for hours. Sometimes days."
Angrily, she flicked a cigarette into the fog. "Took me a month to bring her back after. . . that killing.
The headlights hadn't moved.
Joanne waited until the girl started over, said, "Don’t go anywhere just yet,” and marched up the path toward the light. She kept her head up and her arms swinging, trying to appear as official as she could, given the clothes she wore. Whoever it was, she swore, he was going get his ass royally chewed.
She heard the engine then, soft and throbbing.
The headlights backed away.
She didn’t slow down, she didn't speed up.
Stupid son of a bitch, she thought, able to see now the vague outline of a car; play games with me, you son of a bitch, you're gonna find your ass in a cell. Stupid bastard.
The engine gunned, and she hesitated before realizing the car wasn’t going to charge her. It turned a fast circle instead and sped away, taillights dimming quickly, until there was nothing left but the engine. Mocking her as it faded.
She stopped ten feet from the gateway, rolled her eyes, and turned around. Polly was already there, Mrs. Maurin's arm around her shoulders.
"It wasn't his fault,” the woman said when she saw Joanne's face. "The girl just gets this way sometimes when she’s upset, that’s all.” She hugged the girl before leading her away. "Should have talked in the house. My fault.”
Joanne watched helplessly until the fog took them as well, and her anger boiled over. With hands bunched into fists, she whirled to confront Turpin.
He wasn't there.
The iampposts didn't help; their glow was diffused, creating more shadows than light.
"Turpin!" '
She stomped toward the monument. If there were spotlights, they weren't on.
"Turpin, damn it, where are you?”
He didn't answer.
What she heard instead was a deep-throated growl.
He stepped out from behind a tree and tapped her on the shoulder.
loanne spun around, right hand reaching for the small of her back as she dropped into a crouch.
Richard held up a quick hand to hold her off and cover his smile. "Hey, wait, wait, it's me.”
Her eyes widened, and for a moment he thought she would still pull the revolver he knew she kept back there. It had been a stupid thing, but he hadn't been able to resist it. The timing and the setting had been too perfect.
The hand stayed up, palm out. "Don't say it," he warned, the smile turning to a grin. "Stupid son of a bitch bastard, I know all that already.” The hand lowered slowly. "I’m sorry, okay? !'m sorry.”
It was a long second before he saw the tension drain, her shoulders relax as she straightened and made a show of dusting her hands on her jeans "Never again," she said, walking past him, not looking up. “Never.”
He agreed, apologized again, but couldn't get rid of the smile. It wasn’t so much the easy trick as it was the information Polly had given him. Eyes, she had said; terrible eyes. Until he eased it out of her, she hadn’t really been sure she'd actually seen them. She said something about seeing lights in the sky that no one believed, and so had doubted the eyes and had kept that to herself.
Eyes.
Terrible eyes.
There and gone in an instant, while she had been screaming.
Not green, like his—they had been the pale red of a rogue's advancing madness.
Despite the Warders' insistence, he had needed confirmation for himself. They had been wrong before. Not this time.
Now was the time for hunting.
The next step was to decide how far he could trust Joanne.
As they walked to her car, he wondered how involved she would let herself get in this case. A lot, he figured when she yanked open her door and glared him the order to get in. She didn’t seem the type to simply step back, be his faithful liaison, mind her own business.
They sat in silence while she fumed.
If he decided she would truly be a partner, then, she would have to know. It couldn't be avoided. And there was no telling how she would react.
It wasn't an unusual situation; rare, but not unusual Of those times when his contacts had found out, when he had voluntarily lifted the Veil just for them, only twice had he regretted it. His right hand absently drifted to his left shoulder, pressing lightly in the hollow between shoulder and ribs. The scar had never healed properly.
Unusual, but not rare.
It wasn’t the only scar he carried.
Those two—one man, one woman—hadn't lived long enough to lift the Veil for others. He dearly hoped it wouldn't be the same for Joanne.
"Now what?” she asked stiffly.
He considered what he had known and what he knew now, and gestured at the windshield. "That guy, the one who runs the hang-gliding business. Hendean. I want to see that place, and maybe the place where the woman died."
"Now?" She frowned her puzzlement. "There isn't going to be anyone there, not in this weather."
"Maybe there is," he countered softly. "Please. Humor me."
She didn’t like it, that much was obvious, but she drove through town without questioning him, taking him along a two-lane road that followed the narrowing crest of the mountain. The houses soon grew sporadic, the only structure of note a large, pale, brick complex on the right, whose sign toid him it was Coventry College.
He didn’t ask; she didn't volunteer.
The fog thinned quickly, and what remained was swiftly shredded as the wind picked up again, slow and fitful.
They passed occasional houses whose front yards were small, and whose back yards, he thought, must have been mostly straight down. Before long, however, the trees took over, and through the bare branches he could see the spread of land below, and hazy hills in the distance. It was mostly woodland down there, broken only by fields waiting for spring planting.
Joanne cleared her throat. "I told them—Polly and Mrs. Maurin—that you were FBI.” A rabbit skittered across the road, and she swerved easily to avoid it. "So what are you? Really?"
"Spooky." He grinned when she glanced over. "Really spooky.”
"You got that right," she answered, and he looked away when he saw the start of a smile part her lips.
Better, he thought; it’s getting better, thank God. For all his years, all his experience, handling women’s moods and tempers was absolutely beyond him.
Fifteen minutes later she pulled onto the gravel skirt outside the Hendean launch area. The barnlike shed was weathered with spotty gray, Leon's Air stenciled in red and blue on the sharply canted roof. There were no other cars, no sign of any flyers.
“Waste of time," she muttered as they got out. Richard walked to the concrete lip and looked down
. Straight down. Wishing he hadn't when he felt his stomach lurch and grow as cold as the mountain-top air. God, he thought, swallowing hard; people actually, willingly, throw themselves off here? He shook himself and stepped back, and saw Joanne watching him closely.
"Acrophobia?" she said with just a hint of mocking. "I don’t think so,” he answered, heading for the only door he could see. "Like I said, 1 don’t fly."
"You should try it sometime. It’s a real rush.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You have?”
“Once.”
“Only once?”
"Are you kidding, Turpin? I was scared spitless. I think 1 screamed all the way down. But there’s no getting around it, it was a hell of a rush."
The unmarked door was open, and they stepped over the threshold into one vast room. Frames and foils hung from beams overhead, stirring slightly as drafts found cracks in the walls. Around the walls were workbenches, meta! tool cabinets, a soda machine, and, just left of the door, a table he figured Hendean used for a desk.
In the center of the smooth concrete floor was a smaller work table, at whose bench sat a man in baggy bib coveralls fussing with a length of aluminum tubing caught in a vice. He was thin, with thinning, curly white hair, and granny glasses that kept slipping down the length of his nose. When he noticed them, he grinned and rose.
"Man," loanne whispered.
He was tall, very tall, with watery blue eyes and, despite his lean frame, pudgy cheeks. Despite the hair, he wasn't that old. "Hey, hey," he said pleasantly, wiping his hands on a rag. "Closed today, folks."
Joanne nodded and introduced them.
Curly Guestin shook their hands eagerly. "Police, huh? FBI, huh? Wow. 1 do something wrong?" He laughed, and his face reddened. "Hey, nope. Not me." He gestured toward the table. "I just keep folks from falling out of the sky."
"We’re looking for Mr. Hendean," Richard said.
"Gone." Guestin frowned in thought before nodding. "Yep, he's gone. Was here, now he’s not. Went down the city, I think. I don't know if he’ll be back.” He looked at the rafters. "You want to fly?”
"No," said Richard quickly. "No, thanks.”
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