At first I was supporting her, but by the end she’d started to jog along under her own steam, her sneakers padding evenly along the road surface, and her eyes had started to look clear again.
I opened the passenger side of the car and helped her in, then ran around the other side.
“We’re not going to the hospital,” she said.
“Jane—”
“My name’s Emily. Sometimes Em for short, if that helps,” she said, with something between a wince and a smile. “Can see I’ve thrown you a little there.”
“You . . . just don’t seem like an Emily.”
“I guess my mother didn’t know what I’d grow up to be like.”
“Emily, Em, Jane, whatever. We’re going to the . . .” I stopped, remembering what my plan had been before the ignition in this woman’s truck had blown apart, and what I might want to do after getting to the hospital, and who with. “How bad is it?”
She gingerly started to unwrap the T-shirt.
“Is that a good idea?”
“Don’t know,” she said. “We’ll find out, I guess.”
We could see blood and torn, raw meat. She turned the hand over, and I realized that though I’d thought she’d lost the whole of the tip of the thumb, actually it was just the fleshy part—the bone seemed to be in place. “Fuck,” I said, nonetheless.
“Yep,” she muttered. “Still, I’ve seen worse.”
“The hell you have.”
“You don’t always listen so good, do you? I told you I was in the army. I was in Iraq Two. I’d show you a nice big scar I’ve got up my side, but we never got properly introduced. That was a disconcerting sight right after it happened, I’ll admit. Looked like a slab of spareribs before the sauce goes on. Which I have never been able to eat since, as a matter of fact.”
“How come you’re not in the army anymore?”
“Long story, and not a happy one,” she said, as she started to rewrap her hand. “I’m not welcome there, bottom line. Not welcome many places, which is how come I ended up on this gig. Brian found himself a no- questions-asked job that sounded interesting. He knew I was low on funds and likely to get myself in trouble, so he pulled me in on it, too. Three weeks later I turned up for work at Jonny Bo’s. I wondered how they’d squared that away, but evidently the Thompsons have pull there.”
“They own it,” I said quietly, realizing. “They must. Them and Peter Grant, maybe.”
“You want to light a cigarette? I feel I deserve one.”
I lit two, put hers into her left hand. “Who actually hired you? Tony? Peter?”
“No. It was mainly done by e-mail and phone, though I had one face-to-face with Warner. He is one creepy guy.” She shrugged. “Whatever. I have now resigned. Let’s go.”
“You
“We’ll discuss it later,” she said, leaning back in the seat, taking a long pull on the cigarette, momentarily closing her eyes. “Let’s just go somewhere.”
“One second.”
After getting out of the car and checking all around it, and then looking extremely closely at the ignition, and praying, I got back in and turned the key.
It started. We did not explode.
“You’re learning fast,” she said.
As soon as we got close to St. Armands Circle, we heard shouting, and as I drove into it we saw people running down the stairs out of Jonny Bo’s. Couples. Families. Wait staff. All very afraid.
I got out my phone. When Hallam answered he sounded as though he had his mind on other things.
“You didn’t come,” I said.
“Mr. Moore, I’ve got a serious situation up here.”
“It’s a big day for serious situations. I know who killed Hazel Wilkins. And I can tell you what’s happening in Jonny Bo’s right this minute.”
“You know for sure Mrs. Wilkins is dead? And what do you mean, what’s happening at Bo’s?”
“I’m watching people run screaming out of it.”
“What the hell—”
“I have to go home. Meet me there and I’ll tell you everything I know. Otherwise, in an hour, I’m gone.”
“Mr. Moore, I can’t just—”
“It’s up to you,” I said, and ended the call.
A woman came stumbling down the steps from Bo’s, screaming. Halfway down she lost her footing and fell, landing on her face at the bottom. The people behind just ran straight over her. Sadly, the woman was not Janine.
I stepped on the gas and hammered out the other side of the junction toward the bridge. That’s the last I ever saw of St. Armands Circle.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
It all goes wrong, but that doesn’t surprise him. John Hunter’s life has been going wrong since the day he was born and maybe even before. For a while he did his best to help it. He didn’t study at school or listen to a thing anyone told him. He got involved in bad deeds, ran with kids he shouldn’t—and joined them in becoming the kind of young man that no parent dreams of when they first dandle a hot bundle of possibility on their knee. And he was there, fully present and coated with blame, on the night when a fat old woman who found her house suddenly full of jeering teenagers intent on breakage and fun got so frightened that her heart gave out.
The other boys ran away as soon as it was clear that she’d died, but Hunter remained, trying inexpertly to revive her, wondering about calling the paramedics, or the cops. In the end he ran away, too.
The next day he did not turn up at the bar where they gathered, however. He did not return calls from them, which stopped coming pretty quickly. His former friends went on to savor death and prison and drunken obscurity. He did not.
That night had been enough.
He ran up the stairs on the side of the restaurant and pushed past the girl in the smart black pantsuit at the top. He looked around the dining room and saw no sign of the Thompsons. They were here somewhere, though, he was sure of that—it was the whole reason he’d let the Realtor go, to watch what he did next: the reason he’d shown him the photograph and lit a fire under his ass. He’d learned something about playing games.
He stalked around the entire floor, ignoring the curious glances of diners and waitstaff, until finally he heard one of the latter tell him that the restrooms were over there, sir.
He turned on his heel and went in the direction indicated. He’d looked everywhere else. He didn’t bother to even check the johns but made straight for the artfully nonobvious door he spotted at the end of the corridor. It was resting on the latch, the last person through evidently in too much of a hurry to make sure it was properly shut. He pushed it open, silently, and found the narrow staircase on the other side.
He pulled out his gun and started up the stairs.
Ten years on the roads. Ten years as no one in particular, as that guy who was polite and deferential and pretty good at fixing things. Ten years in the wind before he found a place that was nice and warm and there was beach and soft air and where the people seemed friendly and relaxed and didn’t know or appear to care about the kind of person he’d once been. He found work. He was good with his hands. He was eager to please.
He found Katy, too, or they found each other.
She told him later she’d been feeling especially down the night they met and had come out to the bar determined to drink herself into oblivion (not for the first time). Somehow they’d wound up talking instead. They weren’t sober when they parted in the lot outside, but they were straight enough to exchange phone numbers—and not to lose them.
He found love.
