jail. Come on. Let's go see if we can help Jim.”
“Okay. Have it your way. But if he ends up walking away from this with nothing but probation I’m going to be pissed. This boy is no good.”
“I believe you,” Jeff said. He turned around and walked toward the Subaru. Bill stared down at James a little longer before he followed Jeff.
As soon as both men had their backs facing him, James ripped away the foil blanket and pointed the.38.
“You’re not going anywhere with that car.”
Kathy put her hands to her face and screamed. The men spun around on their heels, startled. James stood up and the foil blanket slid onto the ground and rustled as the wind pushed it away. For the first time all night he realized how much better he was feeling about himself. How the musty stacks of money and Ann’s.38 had cultivated a take-charge attitude in him. That and a real hated of Bill and what he did to his family when he got home from drinking most nights.
I had it lucky if you wanted to make comparisons, James thought. And that’s what made Bill’s kids so mean. He supposed that the way Bill thought was the only way he knew. That you had to make them tough so they’d be ready for a tough world. He’d once stood by idly watching his three boys beat the hell out of James for fishing in what they believed was their polluted trout pond.
“I thought you said he was hurt bad,” Bill said.
Kathy ignored Bill. She turned to James and stared into his eyes. “You don’t want to shoot anyone James.”
“No I don’t, ma’am. I just want the keys to this car.”
“Hell if you do,” Bill shouted. When he took a step forward, James fired the.38 over the man’s shaved head.
He thought of the moth flying through the flame. Saw the sullen face of Bill’s daughter when he’d tried to walk her home one night after school. He’d wanted to take her out to the movies but she kept telling him she couldn’t. And then later she’d fallen during track and when he’d picked her up his eye had caught the bruises on her inner thighs.
“I will put you down, Bill Calder. Watch and see.”
After Ann tied the boat she pulled herself up the staircase to the parking lot, her leg dragging behind her. Hurt so bad she’d started crying. When she got to the top she saw two cars. Hers and someone else’s. Hers had blown over onto its side. It took her a moment to recognize Chad’s bug. She couldn’t believe he was here. The driver had turned on the lights when she’d come up. She thought she saw him and waved and he waved back.
When she got to Chad’s car she was overcome with the need to get warm again. She opened the passenger door and got in. Right away she asked herself if Chad had grown a beard. Thought it strange that it wasn’t blond. His hands, however, were not the same ones she knew. The nails were not painted black. They looked more like dirty claws.
“Hello Ann,” Cyclops said.
“Who are you?” Ann asked. She reached for the door handle but his hand shot out and stopped her.
“I will tell you.”
“What have you done to Chad?”
“He’s around.”
“Where?”
“I promise you’ll see him. After we talk.”
Ann glanced down and saw the Cyclops’ trench coat piled on the floor. The only person she had seen wear something like that had been the derelict she’d seen on the highway.
He’d learned early on that you had to complete things. If you let go of stray ends they came back and choked you.
He’d buried her. But he hadn’t killed her.
When they reached San Diego he’d checked them into a quiet motel a few blocks from the beach. He thought he’d only stay with her a couple of nights but it turned into a week. There was plenty of business to be done in Tijuana, people to meet. In the evenings he’d cross back over the border and return to their motel. He often found her inside the room crying and he’d hold her until it got dark and then take her out to the pool and float around in it with her. He could’ve done it then, he remembered thinking later. She was drunk enough most nights. The cops would just think it was an accident.
One night she told him she couldn’t go through with it. That she wouldn’t survive living like fugitive. Without her daughter in her life. She told him she’d rather die.
He didn’t know what to say to that. He’d been alone on his own for so long that he could only imagine how deep the hurt must have gone.
He tried to think of what else they could do. He told her that with his connections he might be able to help her relocate in Mexico. Eventually get the girl down there with her. But it was only an idea. It would take time. A lot of things would have to be arranged. And it would take some money to make it work. Money he didn’t have right now.
It was late one night when he got back to the motel, too late to go out to the pool and drink with her. As soon as he opened the door he realized something was wrong. She was gone. Hadn’t packed anything. He told himself not to panic. Walked around the motel thinking he might see her coming back from the gas station store with cigarettes. An hour later he checked a couple of bars near the motel. Nothing. She’d vanished.
He kept looking but still couldn’t find her. Sat up all night waiting for her to come back. Calling the police was out of the question. By morning he left her a note on the bed and took a drive down to a strip of seedy bars. He went into some and asked around. After midnight he went inside a dive they’d been to a couple of times. Everyone sitting at the bar turned around and stared at him. Old men elbowed one another and laughed, and a big man with tattooed arms sneered. When Mikhail stared back the man paid and left, the geezers turned back to their drinks. He talked to a cocktail waitress who said Ann’s mother had come in the night before. Dressed only in a bathrobe with a bathing suit underneath. She’d ignored the glances of the men sitting around and ordered several drinks. The waitress said she’d catch cold if she wasn’t careful and the woman had laughed. Had told her that where she was planning to swim was always warm.
He went down to the beach to look for her but couldn’t find her. But by the next afternoon surfers reported seeing her body drifting out past the last breakers. She’d looked peaceful, as if she were asleep on her back. Except for the birds having taken her eyes.
Her body was taken to the city morgue. She had no identification. And after her fingerprints and photos were compared with missing persons reports, they’d decided to put her on ice, shoved her into metal-locker limbo. On the chance that something would change. That someone would come forward and claim her.
It took him a few days to get her out of the morgue. The janitor wasn’t cheap, had treated him as if he was just another sick customer. Mikhail made a mental note to come back and kill the man. He’d loaded her body into the trunk of his car and drove several hours into the desert and buried her before sunrise next to a cluster of Joshua trees. He wasn’t going to let her stay in the cold morgue forever. It was the least that he could do.
It had taken him all night to dig a proper burial hole, much longer than he’d imagined it would. He’d found lots of cans and bottles under the sand, tattered newsprint and windshield glass. And bones. Bones of
